


no surprise more magical

by elentari7



Series: Enchantments and Desolations [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: All my ships, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Brick references wheeeee, F/M, M/M, Multi, POV Multiple, Part-human / magical creature rights activists, Part-human characters, also all my platonic ships, and all my Sorting headcanons, and all my other headcanons and character anecdotes but there is a plot in there somewhere I promise, well...mini-activists. They're stuck at a boarding school trying to pass OWLs.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-04-14 17:10:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4572786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elentari7/pseuds/elentari7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over the course of a Hogwarts school year, a series of newcomers get drawn into a certain society of Very Passionate young wizards...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1 (Marius)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marius arrives at a new school and meets some welcoming, if rather strange, new people.

Marius’ hands clenched and unclenched on the strap of his satchel all the way through the Sorting.

It was disconcerting to reflect that that had been him less than half an hour ago. All those little first years, lining up to consult a hat that talked into your ear while you wore it about which group of people you’d spend your academic career with--such a strange system these British had--but it wasn’t his first year. His Sorting, a quick private non-ceremony in the Headmaster’s office, had been not a fresh beginning to his academic career but a disruption. One he’d chosen, as part of a fresh start to practically every other aspect of his life, but still.

Headmaster Myriel had been unfailingly kind, as Mabeuf had assured him; the castle caretaker, who’d fetched him from the train station, had been...less accessible. He glared a bit too much for Marius’ comfort. And the castle he was in charge of overseeing was so somber and dank to boot. Marius didn’t even want to think about how long it had been since that musty Sorting Hat’s last wash.

The imposing welcome of the Great Hall, though--the tall Gothic windows, the lofty currently-stormy ceiling, the sea of floating candle flames...he had to admit it was impressive.

After he was done dying of mortification, that is. He was certain the entire student population had turned to look when he slipped in, conspicuously alone and conspicuously late, to snag a seat at the nearly-full Hufflepuff table before the first years were brought in.

The upperclassmen he’d squeezed in next to sent him several curious looks, and all nodded along when one of them ventured a “Welcome to Hufflepuff,” but were distracted from further conversation by the Sorting, and in his nervousness Marius was more than happy to let them forget his presence once the food arrived.

The food was impressive too, if rather heavy.

By the time dinner was over, Marius had long put down his fork and knife in favor of clutching at his satchel again, knuckles going white against the leather. He thought he might have eaten too much of the feast. He could feel it weighing him down when he lurched to his feet two seconds behind everyone else, and stumbled the first few steps out of the hall amid the flood of other students. It didn’t occur to him until after he’d escaped the Great Hall that he had no idea where to go. He looked frantically around for the upperclassmen he’d been sitting next to, but he’d already lost them in the sea of black robes. How was he supposed to tell which stream of students to follow? A handful with shiny badges pinned to their chests were calling for first years to follow them, but there were at least a dozen of them and they all seemed to be going in different directions. Marius forced himself to take deep breaths.

“Hufflepuff coming through!” Marius whipped around at the cheerful shout, which carried easily over the tumult of the entrance hall. “Beep beep! C’mon, first years, follow the leader.” Marius caught sight of the speaker just as he was turning away--a boy with dark blonde hair and deep dimples and one arm waving energetically over his head, sulfur-yellow sparks spewing from the tip of his wand--and nearly tripped over his robes rushing after him, latching onto the string of wide-eyed first years trailing behind.

The boy led them down the first flight of stairs they came across, then left, then right, then right again, then along a corridor that sloped steadily downwards. They must have gotten far beneath the castle by this point, mustn’t they? Marius fidgeted with his satchel strap again, shifted it to the other shoulder and slung it around to bounce at his lower back, kept fidgeting. Kept walking. Surely they were almost there.

“Almost there!” the boy tossed cheerfully over his shoulder. “Just up here, past that painting of the fruit--see?” He trotted ahead up to a stack of barrels tucked as discreetly as a stack of barrels can be into a corner, and flourished his wand. “Now, gather ’round and make sure you watch and learn, you’ve got to get the right barrel to get in--”

“Hey! Hey, Marius!”

Marius, still lingering at the edge of the first-year crowd, snapped to attention at the sound of his name. Then he wondered who could possibly be calling him by name. He hadn’t introduced himself to anyone yet.

“Marius Pontmercy!”

He turned to see a dark-skinned man--boy? he was in students’ robes--hurrying down the corridor towards him, someone he was sure he didn’t recognize. At one point the boy tripped on nothing, but he righted himself before he could fall with an outstretched hand that seemed to push against nothing but air. The other hand was clamped around a grubby piece of parchment. Marius held his satchel in front of him, shield-like.

The boy caught up, and caught his breath. “You’re Marius Pontmercy, yeah?”

“Yes--I don’t--know you?” Or how you know my name, he thought. He hugged his satchel a little tighter.

“Me neither,” the boy said cheerfully. “Know you, I mean. Me I know.” He rubbed a hand through his hair, which receded rather high on his brow for a teenager. “Anyway, you dropped this.” He held out the folded-flat parchment, which did indeed have Marius’ name on it. Marius’ stomach swooped when he recognized Mabeuf’s handwriting.

“Oh,” he gasped as he snatched the envelope, “oh my--” To think of losing his father’s letter! He smoothed over the already-worn edges and corners of the envelope, checked inside to see that the contents were intact. Thank goodness. His eyes closed in relief. They opened again to find the cheerful brown boy staring at him in utter bemusement. “Thank you. Um. Sorry.”

“No problem, Marius Pontmercy.” The boy waved away his words. “I’m Lesgle, sixth year. Well, the whole thing’s Lesgle de Meaux, but no one likes using that except my dad.”

“Oh,” Marius perked up excitedly, “are you--”

“Hey wait, hold the--!” Lesgle de Meaux dove past him. Marius stumbled back. He righted himself, turned to see what the fuss was, and saw the enormous lid of one of the barrels swing shut with a click. De Meaux ran right into it. He sighed, still splayed against the pile of barrels. “Just my luck.”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh yeah, peachy.” De Meaux waved away Marius’ concern as airily as he had his thanks. He pushed himself upright again. “What were you saying?”

“If you’re sure…” Marius eyed both de Meaux and the barrels, realizing that he had no idea how to open them. “I was just--your name, are you French?”

“Rom,” de Meaux corrected him. “Dad’s side of the family’s mostly from France, I’ve spent a lot of time there but, well, kind of a long story. You’re transferring from there, right?”

“Yes.” Marius nodded, and clutched his father’s letter. He braced himself for the questions. He was ready for this, he’d spent most of the train ride composing answers.

“Welcome to Hogwarts, then. I hope we don’t disappoint.” De Meaux pulled out his wand and gave a little flourish to go with his bow. “Though the food can be a bit much.”

Marius blinked.

He quickly focused again, though, when he realized de Meaux was about to open the entrance to the Hufflepuff dormitories; he had better pay attention this time. De Meaux turned his head to look at him as he set the tip of his wand against a barrel. “Oh, right, you just tap out ‘Helga Hufflepuff’ to get in. You’ve got to make sure you’ve got the right barrel, though,” he added, turning back to where his wand was already tapping, “or--oh no--”

Marius stumbled back again as what was apparently the wrong barrel spewed dark and very smelly liquid all over the older boy. De Meaux just sighed.

Marius had to scrunch his nose. “Is that...vinegar?”

“Yup.” De Meaux grinned, and wiped his eyes.

The lid of the next barrel over popped open not a second later, and a head of artfully messy dark blond hair popped out. “There you are! Joly was afraid you got the wrong barrel again or someth--oh.” Marius could tell exactly when the new boy--whom he recognized as the one he’d followed down here from the entrance hall--registered his presence, because he looked Marius up and down assessingly. His grin made Marius turn red. “Hi, Marius. Come on in.”

Before Marius could ask how yet another stranger recognized him by name, de Meaux interjected, “Hey, I was doing fine with the welcoming and the showing him in, wasn’t I? I mean, I’m not in your guys’ room, fine, but it’s only one over--”

“Shut up, you.” The new boy vacuumed the vinegar off of de Meaux with a pointed wave of his wand. He turned back to Marius. “You--come on in!”

Marius started, but couldn’t help but obey. He stuck a leg into the barrel, with some difficulty as it was one row up from the ground, and turned back to de Meaux before scooting all the way in. “Um, thank you anyway--I mean, again--and, sorry--”

“Trust me, not a problem.” De Meaux seemed amused. “Go on, I’m right behind you.”

Marius did as he was told, following the messy-haired boy down a perfectly round, perfectly dry, somewhat cramped short tunnel, hearing the older boy clamber up and shut the lid of the barrel behind him. In front of him, the tunnel suddenly brightened as the messy-haired boy kicked open a round door and slid through the opening; Marius followed and found himself tumbling onto a thick brown-and-green carpet laid over warm flagstones.

The boy held out a hand to help him up, rakish grin still in place. “Welcome to Hufflepuff.”

Marius straightened up, brushing at his robes, and took a look around. Behind him he heard de Meaux cheerfully bidding his new acquaintance good night, and said acquaintance calling that he’d see him tomorrow, and the sound of a door shutting. His eyes, though, were occupied with cataloguing the room--broad, earth-toned, the long curved wall opposite him set with alternating round clerestory windows and warm lamps, everything centered around an enormous fireplace and the portrait surmounting it. The motherly-looking witch in the portrait waved at him.

Marius’ host gestured grandly to encompass the crackling fire, plush furniture, and plants in pots and baskets all around the room. “This, Marius Pontmercy, is our common room. The dormitories are through there--not there, that’s the girls’ rooms, don’t, ah, don’t try to get into those, the magic’s built-in, it’s awkward for everyone--there, opposite side. We’re in the fifth year dorm, there’ll be an even eight of us now! I’m Courfeyrac, by the way,” he added, and tapped at the shiny badge pinned to his chest. “Prefect this year! What is this school coming to. So, bring your questions, concerns, crimes in need of cover-up, et cetera, to me--I’ll actually be just in the next bed.”

Marius was being towed along toward the boys’ dormitories before he had quite caught up with that speech, but Courfeyrac just kept talking. “So how’s your first day been? Private Sorting, eh, what’s that like? You met Myriel? He’s pretty cool for an old guy, isn’t he? How long’ve you been in the country, then? Should I--” he looked over his shoulder, a bit sheepish. “Should I be shutting up or slowing down or something?”

“No, it’s fine,” Marius replied, once he was sure he’d caught up to everything Courfeyrac meant to say for the moment. “I’ve spoken English all my life.”

Courfeyrac seemed impressed. “You have, haven’t you? You haven’t got an accent at all. How many languages can you do that with?”

“Just French, English, and Latin--Classical pronunciation. Those are the ones I grew up with.” Courfeyrac whistled. Marius blushed again, but felt pleased. He was always enthused to talk about his linguistic studies. “I’ve been working on Mermish and Gobbledegook since I started school but I’ve fallen behind...lately…”

“Busy man, our Marius.” Courfeyrac flashed him his grin again, the sheer wattage of which forced any possible awkwardness or despondency to dissipate. He slung an arm around Marius’ shoulders, and Marius was almost too grateful to startle at the physical contact.

Courfeyrac slung open a door on the right-hand side of the boys’ corridor and breezed through, arm still around Marius. “Evening, gents!”

Only one of the six boys in the room looked up, abandoning his conversation with the boy sprawled in the next bed. He pinned Courfeyrac with a questioning stare. “Wrong barrel,” Courfeyrac explained.

The sprawling boy--still not changed out of his robes, spread out like a human inkblot on the sheets--snorted. “Of course wrong barrel, this is Bossuet we’re talking about.” The first boy stretched one leg across the space between their beds to poke at the sprawler’s knee with his toe.

Marius looked from one to the other to Courfeyrac in confusion. “I thought his name was Laigle?”

“Surname, yeah,” Courfeyrac agreed--unhelpfully, since everyone called everyone by their surnames here. Except Marius, for some reason.

The sprawler sat up, combing unkempt dark hair out of the way of hooded dark eyes. He smirked where Courfeyrac would grin. “Well, see, there was this bishop of Meaux in the seventeenth century--”

“Short version, R knows lots of mysterious facts and Bossuet’s name is a metaphor, ” interrupted the sprawler’s--R’s--lanky, mousy-haired companion. “Pun? Both? I’m Joly, it’s nice to meet you, Marius!”

Marius had opened his mouth to return the greeting, and to ask how everyone in this House seemed to already know him by sight, when Courfeyrac clapped his hands loudly and cried, “Yes! Introductions! Everyone, this is the new Beauxbatons transfer, his English is really good and he sounds really smart so talk to him! Marius Pontmercy, this is everybody. You’ve met this whole side of the room,” he gestured at the line of four beds of which Joly and R occupied two, “that side is Silverstein, Cooper, Mendes, and O’Hare.” Each of the four boys nodded in acknowledgement, one of them waved, and all visibly tried their best not to stare in open curiosity.

“Hope you had a good trip,” Silverstein said politely. “Not too tired?”

“A bit, yes.” Marius looked around. “I was told my trunk would be brought to my room…?” Mendes pointed helpfully to the last remaining four-poster, where Marius’ trunk sat unopened by the footboard. “Ah. Thank you.”

“Right next to me!” Courfeyrac bounded over and made a flying leap onto his own bed, at which Joly yelped in alarm and R gave a noisy sigh, heaving himself over to his own trunk to change into pajamas.

Marius hung his school satchel on one of the bedposts and dug his own pajamas out of his trunk, Courfeyrac keeping up a steady stream of chatter and questions the while. “We’ll get our schedules tomorrow at breakfast, you’ll meet Professor Muguet, she’s our Head of House. Don’t worry, she’ll like you, she likes everyone--that wasn’t supposed to sound insulting, drat, what electives are you taking?” By the time everyone was changed and ready for bed Marius thought Courfeyrac might know more about him than his closest living relatives did.

“Just tug on that cord there, and there,” Courfeyrac pointed, “and you’ll close the curtains. I’ll wake you for breakfast, shall I?”

Marius pulled the cords and a plush gold darkness fell around him. Through the heavy velvet curtains he heard the muffled voices of Silverstein and Cooper and Mendes and O’Hare calling good night up and down the row, and the slightly less muffled voices of R yelling something at Courfeyrac about bedbugs and Joly crying “don’t joke about that!” and Courfeyrac laughing at them both. As he burrowed under the covers, the others’ voices settled into silence, and the lines of lamplight where his curtains met went dark. He waited a moment, before quietly sitting up and carefully extracting the battered parchment envelope from his satchel where it still hung on the bedpost.

He ran his fingers over it in the dark, fancying he could feel his name on it in ink; he unfolded (with minimal crackling) the letter Mabeuf had written him and the letter his father had left behind for him, and scanned the memorized words in his mind’s eye. Tucking both letters back into the envelope and the envelope under his pillow, he lay back down. The warmth of the covers, of Courfeyrac’s grin, of Laigle’s cheer and the fifth-years’ welcome, of his father’s words beneath his ear, suffused him; he felt himself suddenly smiling as he drifted off to sleep.

Before his eyes closed he noticed, through the dimness of his velvet-wrapped bed, that the “I” in the MARIUS PONTMERCY stitched onto the flap of his satchel was starting to peel off. He’d have to do something about that.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello folks! Welcome to my first foray into writing in this fandom, I hope it is entertaining so far. It is also approximately my second foray into writing anything with an overarching plot, so we'll see how this goes! Comments and suggestions and squeeing over characters/headcanons/details of any sort are welcome! 
> 
> [Here](http://hernaniste.tumblr.com/post/23438252868/why-is-lesgles-nickname-bossuet-sorry-to) is an excellent and much more concise than I could ever make it explanation of the pun/metaphor that is Bossuet's name. It is not specified in canon that R gave him his nickname, but I figure a guy called Grantaire who thinks it's clever to call himself R (and who knows a ton of random facts) would absolutely come up with it, so I have made it so. R is definitely (in this AU) the one who had the bright idea to call him Eagle of Meaux, and Bossuet would patiently explain _every time_ that his name is spelled Lesgle with too many consonants, not L'aigle like the bird, until eventually R got cheeky and came up with the much more convoluted Bossuet instead. At which point Bossuet gave up.
> 
> I don't foresee him getting a lot of time in the story, but I am very taken with the idea of Bishop Myriel / Monseigneur Bienvenu as the intimidatingly kind Headmaster who exasperates the board of directors and doesn't fit in at the Ministry, but whom everybody at Hogwarts--from the students to the faculty to the groundskeeper to the house elves--adores. The merfolk and even the centaurs respect him too, purely because he respects them. The caretaker who brings Marius to Myriel may make more appearances, though, and I will be tickled if people can already tell who it is. :)
> 
> Many many thanks to [SecondSecret](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondSecret/pseuds/SecondSecret), Roxie, and [akitcougar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/akitcougar/pseuds/akitcougar) for the beta (they are awesome and y'all should read their stuff :) )


	2. Chapter 2 (Marius)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marius is the new kid, Courfeyrac is the Energizer Bunny, and Bossuet leaves singed eyebrows in his wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Marius facecast](http://www.mediafire.com/view/lp13xxub8qrp9kj/puffs%20part%202.png)!

Courfeyrac made good on his promise to wake Marius for breakfast. He did it dramatically. That seemed to be his way.

“Rise and shine!” he sang, throwing open the curtains on Marius’ bed. (Well, he certainly wasn’t speaking like a normal human being, though whatever he was doing resembled no tune known to man. Or beast, quite possibly.)

“How are you even alive at this hour?” R groaned from several beds over, where his curtains had also been yanked open, and stuffed his head under a pillow. Joly and Mendes were up and stumbling about blearily, but the rest of their dorm-mates glowered at Courfeyrac bouncing on Marius’ bed, seeming to share R’s sentiment.

Marius fumbled for his satchel and pulled out his father’s watch. “S’almost seven-thirty…”

“And breakfast starts in four minutes, so let’s go! Up, up, up!”

Normally Marius would have been awake and dressed and at breakfast revising his homework by now--or his summer reading, given that it was the first day of school. He probably could have used it today, too. He wasn’t nearly as caught up on the summer reading this year as he was accustomed to be. But here he was, somehow managing to have slept past six a.m. sharp for the first time in...well, in his memory.

He wrapped up the watch and tucked it carefully away in his trunk before getting dressed--to the sound of R whining from under his pillow every time Joly poked him in the ribs--slipping his letters into an inner pocket, and trundling out after Courfeyrac.

\---

After breakfast--

(“See, this is what I meant about the food being a bit much,” Bossuet said, poking at Courfeyrac’s carb-and-protein-piled plate. Courfeyrac made an indignant noise at the sixth-year through a mouthful of potatoes. “You need a hollow leg to eat that much this early in the morning.”

“Fills you right up and makes you want to go back to sleep,” R agreed.

“On the other hand,” Courfeyrac said around his potatoes, holding up a slice of his counterargument, “bacon.”

Everyone bowed their heads in concession to this fact.)

\--their first class of the day was Charms. It was a double period shared with the Ravenclaws. Marius lost track of the staircases (two of which moved) and corridors (lined with dozens of perfectly charming, and dozens more rather ill-mannered, paintings), but was fairly certain they’d ended up on the third floor. The classroom was crowded with neat rows of two-person desks. R made an immediate bid for the back row upon entering the room, but Joly caught him by the arm without even looking and marched him to a desk closer to the middle. Courfeyrac bounded up the aisle to secure the desk next to theirs. “Come on, Pontmercy!” He dragged Marius to sit beside him.

The boy at the desk in front of Joly’s turned at the sound of Courfeyrac’s voice. He raised a quizzical eyebrow at Courfeyrac over his glasses.

Courfeyrac waved at the boy, who was as dark as Courfeyrac was fair and as calm and serious-looking as Courfeyrac was...well, Courfeyrac. And he wasn’t one of their dorm-mates, so, Marius assumed, a Ravenclaw. “New guy!” Courfeyrac stage-whispered over the clatter and murmur of the class taking their seats, and Marius could feel his face going red.

The Ravenclaw just gave a silent “Ah,” and nodded in understanding. He moved his satchel off the seat next to him--he must have been saving it for Courfeyrac, Marius thought with some guilt--and hailed another student with a gesture. The girl (another Ravenclaw with wavy dark hair, and the boy’s fellow prefect if their matching badges were anything to go by) stopped to greet him, then took the offered seat.

Said seat was directly in front of Joly, who looked mildly shell-shocked.

Marius did his absolute best to concentrate on the lesson, which today was mostly a preparatory spiel about Ordinary Wizarding Levels. (Marius wasn’t sure which aspect of the British system was more bizarre, the existence of fifth-year standardized exams or the acronym.) But between Joly’s case of nerves on his right, Courfeyrac’s attempts to communicate with his Ravenclaw friend across him on his left, and said friend’s occasional no-one-understands-your-made-up-sign-language glances from across the aisle, he felt surrounded by distractions.

\---

Their last class of the day was Herbology. It was taught by their Head of House, the kind and surprisingly young professor who had given Marius a smile along with his class schedule that morning. Herbology had never been one of Marius’ favorite subjects, given the amount of dirt involved, but Professor Muguet managed to make it interesting--he wished he could send clippings from even a single plant in this greenhouse back to Mabeuf for his garden--as did Marius’ Housemates, albeit in a...different sense.

“Why do you call her that?” Marius asked R as they trekked back toward the castle, splattered with sod by Courfeyrac’s badly-behaved Fanged Geranium. R had left the greenhouse with a flourish and an attempt to kiss Professor Muguet’s hand (rebuffed without her even having to look up), sighing a name that certainly wasn’t hers. He was now occupied keeping Joly walking in a straight line as the other boy, not watching where he was going, went over every inch of his robes with Scouring Spells.

“Because she doesn’t answer to her first name,” R replied, explaining absolutely nothing. “I think you’ve beat the dirt, Joly.”

“You can’t be too careful. She goes by her middle name,” Joly said to Marius, finishing up his inspection of his sleeves and starting on R’s. “Which R found out. So for all of third year, he was calling her Miss May.” He giggled at the memory. “She kept warning him it’d land him in detention one day, and then it actually did. So he switched to Mademoiselle Floréal.”

“She gave up,” Courfeyrac put in dryly.

“Naturally.” R waggled his heavy eyebrows. “She couldn’t resist me forever.”

“Except yeah, she can. Married her Gringotts boyfriend, hasn’t she?” R groaned theatrically. “Hey now.”

“Yeah, I got the lecture last year, remember? And the death glare. Both of which,” R added, “are far more terrifying than you.” Marius had no idea what was being referred to, but Courfeyrac conceded the point with a shrug. “Besides, it’s not like I was the only one who was shocked.”

“It isn’t fair to be shocked,” Courfeyrac said loftily, pushing through the door of the Great Hall. “Just because I don’t want to marry a goblin, doesn’t mean she can’t want to marry a goblin.”

“Are we talking about R’s doomed courtship?” Bossuet asked, looking up from the end of the Hufflepuff table where he’d saved four seats. It was fortunate he was already sitting down, so that when R shoved him he only ended up with his elbow in the mashed potatoes.

“Which one?” Courfeyrac joked. R didn’t shove him, but he sat down in the farthest possible seat from him, and Marius was surprised to see Joly shoot Courfeyrac a reproachful glare.

It was also a little surprising to see Courfeyrac look genuinely contrite. He was conciliatory towards R for the rest of dinner. R, meanwhile, absorbed in his own thoughts, seemed to have lost any desire to talk.

\---

The next afternoon, Marius, having survived his first day, was sent forth to navigate the castle by himself. “You can do it without me. I have faith in you, Pontmercy,” Courfeyrac intoned. “Also I don’t actually know how to find the Ancient Runes room.”

Marius got lost on the way, but only once, and he’d left lunch early, so he wasn’t noticeably tardy. He was glad of it; Ancient Runes was the class he was most excited for. He’d hoped to begin with a good impression.

The tall black boy from Charms was already there, sitting in the front row--apparently he was the sort of person to be early to every class. Marius hesitated. He hadn’t known the boy would be here. Naturally. There was no way for him to have known. They didn’t know each other.

The boy appeared to recognize Marius, though, because he acknowledged him with a nod before turning to face the front of the room. Marius froze in indecision, finally deciding to wave back when it was too late for the boy to see him.

He sighed, and slid into a seat in the back.

\---

Courfeyrac came by the Hufflepuff table at the beginning of dinner but did not stay. “I knew you could do it,” he declared, ruffling Marius’ hair. (Marius yelped--he had spent time on his hair this morning.) “You should celebrate not being swallowed alive by the castle, never to be seen again. I’d help, but I’ve got a previous engagement. Planning meeting.”

Bossuet and Joly exchanged grins, and Bossuet elbowed R, who, from the sound of it, kicked him under the table. Marius, however, was a little concerned. “Instead of dinner?”

“They have that at the Ravenclaw table too,” Courfeyrac said breezily. “You, Lesgles, entertain him in my place, tell him your latest anecdotes.”

“What makes you think I’ve got any? I’ve only had two days!”

“You’re you.” Courfeyrac waved a dismissive hand. “You’ve always set one of the suits of armor on fire by the first day. Laters!”

Bossuet turned back to his plate as Courfeyrac disappeared. “Jerk.”

“Have you...set a suit of armor on fire?” Marius asked, tentatively.

Bossuet shrugged. “Nah.”

“Really? After two whole days?” R snorted. “You’re slipping, Eagle.”

Joly, though, was gazing at Bossuet with exceeding anxiety. “Bossuet…”

“I haven’t,” Bossuet soothed, “I promise.”

“What have you set on fire?” Joly was not to be denied.

Bossuet scratched his head sheepishly. “The...dungeon?”

Joly sprang out of his seat and began checking Bossuet over for injuries. R nicked a slice of fried potato from Joly’s abandoned plate. “Aren’t you supposed to be good at Potions?” he drawled.

It transpired, over dinner, that Bossuet hadn’t actually been in class at the time of the incident, and wasn’t sure how he’d ended up in the dungeons or what he’d done to make them catch fire, but nothing more than a few people’s eyebrows had been harmed. “And they can just go to the hospital wing to set that straight,” he added, with a comforting pat on Joly’s shoulder. “Simplice sees that all the time.”

Dinner was open until eight, but tonight Marius’ companions stood up to leave at a quarter to seven. “We’ve got a thing,” Bossuet said apologetically. “Courf’ll be there too, but we’ll all be back maybe ten-ish? Are you good to get back to the common room on your own?”

He thought he would be. He knew the landmarks, at least, and if he didn’t see the painting with the pear within fifteen minutes he would just ask another painting for directions. Not that there were many paintings on that level. Maybe he would do better to wait for others to leave and follow them.

He was doing just that, surrounded by empty seats, when Courfeyrac appeared at his elbow. “So, I’ve got a thing tonight.”

“I heard.” Marius knew he had no right to feel bereft, when Courfeyrac and his friends had spent the better part of two days with him--Courfeyrac had even abandoned his Ravenclaw friend for him--and all he had to do was follow someone else to the common room. He was accustomed to being on his own, after all. He supposed the warm welcome had made him unused to it.

“Did you?” Courfeyrac looked thoughtful for a moment. Then a sly grin slid onto his face. “Would you, by any chance, happen to have opinions on the rights and oppression of marginalized magical populations?”

Marius took a moment to parse the abrupt change of subject. His hand flew to the pocket where Mabeuf’s letter and his father’s will were safely ensconced. Courfeyrac couldn’t have known what the motion signified, but his grin grew. “Yes.”

He had hardly said it when Courfeyrac hauled him to his feet. “Come along then!” He scooped up Marius’ satchel. “You have a thing tonight.”

\---

“Sometimes the butterbeer’s sour and the owls get better fed than you and you just hate humanity,” was the first thing Marius heard upon entering the tiny fourth-floor classroom to which Courfeyrac led him. Or rather, it was the first thing he managed to single out of the general commotion--everyone in the tiny room seemed to be talking at the top of their lungs, and nobody about the same thing. The declaration Marius heard was loud enough to overpower the confusion of voices in the room, but still did not make any sense.

He located the source, which turned out to be R, seated at desk in the nearest corner. Bossuet was sitting next to him, entirely focused on the length of parchment before him; the lack of attention did nothing to deter R, who continued rambling without appearing to pause for breath. “And somehow people manage to be surprised when--”

“R, I love you, but not enough to fail in the first week. Do shut up.”

“Shut up yourself, Eagle, nobody cares about History of Magic.”

“Says the guy who spent four staircases declaiming on the history and uselessness of the Trace.”

“I wasn’t being studious, I was being angry. And bored. And irritated, and bored, and tired, and bored…”

At the next desk Marius recognized Joly talking rapidly and animatedly to a large and burly Gryffindor. “Our very first class! On the very first day! She sat right in front of me! And on her way out after class, she smiled!” Joly wrung his hands.

The other boy tilted his head to the side. “Smiled.”

“At me!”

“Ahhhhh.”

Marius was distracted by the sudden flurry of motion on the other side of the circle, nearer the front--or rather, by its color. One of the waving hands was wearing a rainbow-striped fingerless glove; the other wore one in neon green and purple; both clashed horrifically with the gesticulator’s long bright copper hair, which in turn clashed horrifically with a glittery orange scarf. Marius could not for the life of him make out what had excited this...colorful person so much--the only words he caught being “empyrean,” “Elysian,” and “rainbow,” which combination meant nothing whatsoever to him--and could only admire the person over whose head the gestures were flying. Said person was bent over a textbook with a quill inking up the margins as fast as he could possibly be reading, and did not so much as twitch in reaction.

For a moment Marius thought he might be the Ravenclaw boy from Charms and Ancient Runes, but no, that would be the one on his other side--the one the garishly-dressed person was talking to. As he sat facing the door, he was the first to notice Courfeyrac and Marius come in, and greeted them both with a nod. Marius knew he’d been recognized. He quailed a little under the steady gaze.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Courfeyrac clapped his hands together sharply practically next to his ear. “Evening, gents! I’ve brought us an apprentice!”

Bossuet cheered--Marius felt himself turn red--and the entire room turned toward him. Well, almost the entire room. Joly waved as energetically as he did everything, his conversation partner raised one large hand, and the long-haired boy gesticulating at Courfeyrac’s Ravenclaw friend whipped around to look; R just tilted back in his chair, and the boy concentrating on his homework looked up just long enough to nod in greeting.

Then the entire room did a double take.

Marius hated being the center of attention. It was almost never a good thing. But this was not his grandfather’s social circle, he reminded himself. With luck, it could be his own.

“Um, hello?” he said.

He didn’t realize someone else had entered the room until they brushed past him.

In his defense, the new boy didn’t seem to notice him either, making a beeline for the desk at the front of the room next to the Ravenclaw boy. When he turned to face the room everyone straightened up in their seats (except said Ravenclaw, whose posture was already ramrod-straight). R’s chair legs dropped back to the floor with a thud. Marius stood at attention, himself; something about the new arrival seemed to merit it. The boy swept a few stray strands of blond hair--which, unlike Courfeyrac’s, seemed effortlessly perfect--out of his face, and his voice when he spoke was more commanding than that of any teenager (and many adults) Marius had ever met. “Good evening, everyone.”

“Hi, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac said loudly. “How was your summer, then?”

The blond boy frowned at Courfeyrac. “I just saw you at dinner. We talked about that for a quarter of an hour.”

“Also,” Courfeyrac continued as though uninterrupted, while his Ravenclaw friend smirked, “as I was just saying, we have a new recruit! Marius Pontmercy.”

He gave a flourish, but Marius was distracted by suddenly having Enjolras’ full attention on him. It felt like being examined under a magnifying glass. By the sun.

Since this person seemed to be in charge, and had a gaze capable of charring, Marius hoped he was making an acceptable impression.

“Welcome, Marius.” Well, that was a good sign. “Why are you here today?”

Marius had a brief moment of panic before he realized he was being asked why he was in this room, rather than in this country. Though, when he thought about it, the reason was the same. “I was told--I mean, Courfeyrac told me--that this had to do with the rights and oppression of marginalized magical populations?”

“It does.” Enjolras’ gaze flicked around the room, encompassing everyone in it. “We’re a society of friends. Believers in progress. We welcome any friend to the abased and oppressed. So, why have you come?”

He would have to tell people eventually--it wasn’t as though he were ashamed. And these seemed like the people to tell it to. “My father was a werewolf.” The ensuing silence was perfectly respectful--there were no looks of pity--which was good. But everyone seemed to expect him to go on. He supposed he ought to be more thorough. “He was kept away from me, by my own grandfather, because a werewolf wasn’t good enough for him, and I didn’t know he cared for me at all until after he was dead. I never even saw him alive.” Marius had to pause and consciously unclench his fingers from his robes. “I was meant to start my fifth year at Beauxbatons, but this is my father’s country, and I don't want to stay any longer with the people who kept us apart.”

It felt good to say it. He could feel his father’s and Mabeuf’s letters burning a hole in his pocket.

The tall Ravenclaw boy spoke up first. “I am sorry for that,” he said, quiet and genuine. “Go on.”

Marius blinked. “Sorry?”

The boy regarded him earnestly over his glasses. “You haven’t yet gotten to why you’re here.”

Marius was confused, now. “I thought I’d explained myself,” he said, a little stiffly.

“You did.” The blond boy--Enjolras--stepped forward. He met Marius’ gaze and held it. “Not everyone here has personal reasons to be angry. Don’t be here because your grandfather wronged you.” He gripped Marius’ shoulder, the touch as startling as his intensity, the gesture as compelling as his voice. “Your father was wronged by society. Come to change that.”

Courfeyrac gave him a steadying pat when Enjolras released him, and steered him to a seat, his smile kind. “We ask everyone that,” he whispered. “Welcome to the club.”

“Thank you all for coming back this year.” The Ravenclaw shuffled a sheet of parchment to the top of the neat stack in front of him, while Enjolras took his seat. “It hardly feels like we left, but things have been happening over the summer, as I’m sure you've heard. I know they were only announced last week, but we’d like to discuss the recently proposed new werewolf--” he gave Marius a nod “--regulations. Shall we begin?”

Marius learned more about werewolves in the next hour than he had in the past fifteen years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~ Floréal's name is Jacqueline May Muguet. She has never liked the name Jacqueline, so in conversation she always goes by May, which R naturally exploited because she's a hot young professor. And when he couldn't get away with that, well, he couldn't resist a [pun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar#Spring). (20 April - 19 May, close enough :) ) The 7th day of the month is even named Muguet! (i.e. Lily of the valley. The French Republican Calendar had a very detailed naming system...)
> 
> ~ As with Headmaster Myriel, I do not foresee her showing up much or playing a significant part but I am very fond of the idea of Sister Simplice as the school nurse, calmest person on earth, impossible to shock or surprise, and taking no shit from anyone. And if many smartass preteen boys are like Seamus, I bet she sees singed eyebrows every other week.
> 
> ~ So, it looks like I am going to be trying for an update every other week? School has just started, though, so we'll see how long I can keep that up.


	3. Chapter 3 (Marius)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Un groupe qui a failli devenir historique_ : Hogwarts Remix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Les Amis facecasts!  
> [The Triumvirate](http://www.mediafire.com/view/h4j3cpe59fqw6fl/ecc.png)  
> [The Other Triumvirate](http://www.mediafire.com/view/faib4fi9i30c14n/puffs%20part%201.png)  
> [The Gryffindors](http://www.mediafire.com/view/65axc35uineiyaz/gryffs.png)

With his induction into Courfeyrac’s society of friends, Marius found his social life being taken over by it. Or rather, it would have been if he’d previously had one. Most of the group were fifth years and spent time studying together outside of meetings, regardless of House affiliation; and everyone just hung out, in various configurations, all the time. Marius ended up eating at the Gryffindor or Ravenclaw table for every other meal just by trying to stick close to Courfeyrac. But, Courfeyrac being the most relentlessly social person in the group (and possibly the school) Marius ended up getting to know everyone at least a little.

\--

Marius thought he understood Enjolras’ magnetism when he found out the boy was one-quarter veela, but he was quickly corrected. “He had to be homeschooled until last year because the magical attractiveness hits with puberty and you have to learn control,” Courfeyrac explained. “He makes a point of never using it to influence anyone. Thinks it’s ‘invasive, superficial, and demeaning’.”

“It’s not the magic, or the looks,” R said when Marius looked dubious. “It’s Enjolras.” He shrugged, like that explained everything.

Not that Enjolras’ looks didn’t attract attention without effort. Most of the little society obeyed Enjolras’ preferences and ignored them, but R made a lot of presumably complimentary references Marius didn’t understand: the Antinous Ecouen, a Botticelli angel. Less sophisticated but still appreciative were the third years who giggled when Enjolras walked past, and occasionally followed him to classes and meals. To say that Enjolras did not reciprocate their appreciation would have been the understatement of the century.

“He leaves a trail of broken hearts in his wake,” Courfeyrac sighed dramatically. “Poor disillusioned souls in need of comfort. But don’t let them tempt you. It’s bad form to date one of Enjolras’ ducklings.”

“Hypocrite,” said R and Bossuet in unison.

Enjolras saved his attention for causes, and his conviction in them as in everything was unshakeable. He judged and found guilty all discriminators, from those who objectified him as part-veela to those who degraded Bossuet as Rom. “A good chunk of last year was spent trying to keep him from scaring the house-elves,” R told Marius, loudly, and Marius saw Enjolras’ eyes narrow from a few seats away. “The ones on his fancy-schmancy estate are probably used to him, but the poor Hogwarts staff’d never met someone who wanted to interrogate them for data on their quality of life.”

“Not everyone treats elves under their employ like Myriel does,” Enjolras said coolly, pointedly not looking at R, and Marius extracted himself from the conversation in a hurry when R smirked and opened his mouth to reply. It was always vaguely uncomfortable being in the middle of those two, because R never failed to irritate and Enjolras often failed to just ignore him.

It was something of an accomplishment, given Enjolras' usual unflappableness. While easily impassioned, he was hard to just _annoy_. Marius supposed it had something to do with that control Courfeyrac had mentioned, as Enjolras also tended not to speak up much--he was just forceful about it whenever he did. He spent more time in meetings listening, still as a statue, absorbed in intense thought. After the first hour, when discussion devolved into social and academic conversation--they were a group of friends and schoolmates, foremost--he seemed content to look on with a bemused smile. Marius found himself sympathizing; when it came to social interaction he mostly did the same.

Though, given who their friends were, he often watched them with more trepidation than serenity.

\--

The most nerve-wracking person was the Ravenclaw, the one who’d prodded him for answers at his first meeting, Enjolras’ co-leader and co-founder, Combeferre. Marius understood that this nervousness was irrational. Combeferre was the furthest thing from unkind (his voice and expression were habitually mild); he ridiculed nothing and no one and was genuinely interested in everything (having read more Muggle literature--and wizarding, for that matter--than anyone else in the room); he was the designated voice of reason (particularly when Enjolras got heated and started talking in sentence fragments, which happened twice in the first month of school); he was unfailingly patient. But there was something about that mildness, that rationality, that deliberateness in choosing his words...it just all combined to give an intimidating impression of knowing everything.

Marius made the mistake of admitting this impression to Bossuet, who laughed so hard he walked into a wall. Marius was embarrassed, but still not convinced he was wrong.

He saw Combeferre every day, since when they didn’t have double Charms together they had Ancient Runes, but neither of them spoke much. Marius spent class time scribbling copious notes and Combeferre, as far as he could tell, spent it memorizing the lecture to organize into meticulous outlines later. At meetings (or rather, the social hour afterward), Marius overheard him expounding upon word-perfect quotes from the lectures he hadn’t taken notes on, mentioning secondary readings or alternate perspectives or critiquing the professors, for heaven’s sake. Marius could see why everyone expected him to be at the front of a classroom himself one day.

None of this did anything to dispel the all-knowing impression.

“Combeferre keeps our collective head on straight. Token Ravenclaw.” Courfeyrac, who despite his status as one of Combeferre’s best friends was currently being thwarted in his attempts to copy from his Charms outline, tried to ruffle Combeferre’s hair, which was too short to have the desired effect. He gave up on ruffling, but left his hand resting on Combeferre’s head.

“We have Joly and Prouvaire, I’m convinced that gives us one more whole Ravenclaw,” Combeferre said, serene and dry and completely ignoring the hand splayed across his scalp.

“One whole Claw, plus the leftover put together gives us...one borderline hypochondriac Gryffindor?” Courfeyrac scratched Combeferre’s head thoughtfully. “Or one kind of terrifying Hufflepuff.”

Marius looked over at the pale boy in the opposite corner, who was toying with the end of one of his long auburn braids with one hand and his quill with the other, gazing dreamily into the middle distance. It made possibly the least threatening picture Marius could imagine.

He turned back to find Combeferre and Courfeyrac both looking highly amused. “Give it a little time,” Combeferre said. “He’ll get started on something or other.”

He smiled and Marius honestly could not understand how _Combeferre_ could sit there and call other people terrifying.

\--

In fairness to Marius, the first time he met Jean (“Jehan, please”) Prouvaire, Courfeyrac had shoved him at the boy before his second meeting with the order to “convince him we’re not scary.” He was willowy to the point of being lost in his robes. He was the youngest member of the group by a year. In addition to the mismatched gloves and the glittery scarves (or possibly single scarf that cycled through the rainbow at his whim. Or costume jewelry, depending on the day) he actually wore flowers in his hair. Marius had had no reason to suspect.

When he talked Jehan Prouvaire was sweet and earnest and occasionally rhymed for no reason, and his fingers were always busy with something--a stray thread, his hair, someone else’s hair. A quill, if there was one on hand. If there was parchment too, it would end up covered in quotations of poetry, some of it his own. It didn’t matter if this parchment happened to be someone’s homework.

Marius first saw his other side after the meeting during which, to his surprise, Prouvaire voluntarily spoke up about the wizarding bias against the centaurs. The main point seemed to be that they ought to be respected regardless of stereotypical wisdom and nobility, and ignoring that fact cost the wizarding world too much in knowledge, perspective, and basic decency, but Prouvaire used a lot of words; Marius didn't quite follow everything. Feuilly fist-bumped him when he sat down. He was still rather pink in the face. Combeferre, leaving Enjolras to a wildly gesticulating Courfeyrac, came over and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “Beautifully put, as usual.” The smile he gave Prouvaire was, to Marius, uncharacteristically soft. “Don’t stay up all night writing about it, though, all right? You remember how Bahorel was the last time that happened before a match.”

“Match’s weeks away,” Prouvaire murmured, though he let Combeferre pluck his quill from his fingers.

“But your first practice is tomorrow, yes?”

Prouvaire sighed, but beamed brighter than ever. “Yes, we had excellent tryouts this year, I’m so excited to get back on the pitch, we’ve got new competition on the Slytherin team but I saw him fly, I’m positive he’s no match for us.”

“Few are.” Combeferre patted Jehan’s shoulder.

“Who’s ‘we’?” Marius asked hesitantly. “The...Gryffindor Quidditch team?” He had never been much interested in Quidditch, but if his friends played he would have to brush up.

“Bahorel and I, we’ve been partnered on the team for years, we’re unstoppable.” There was a certain satisfaction underlying Prouvaire’s cheer. “Last year we put at least one player out of the game per match.”

“...What position do you play?” Marius asked, nervous now.

Prouvaire gave him a sweet, sweet smile that was frankly alarming. “Beater.”

Combeferre wasn’t bothering to hide his grin, and Feuilly snorted without looking up from his homework. “They never see it coming.”

\--

Feuilly, Prouvaire’s fellow Gryffindor but in Marius’ year, might have been the busiest person Marius had ever met. He took twice the recommended number of electives (for a total courseload of ten) and was somehow passing everything, even with his extra duties as a prefect and his vehement twice-weekly participation in his friends’ society. He was “intense,” as Courfeyrac described it, about every single thing he did. The result was that his every spare moment, including casual conversations, was spent doing work.

He was also part-vampire and determined that everyone know it. And particular about how everyone treated it.

Marius hadn’t meant to be rude, he’d simply noticed him looking rather faint that evening until Courfeyrac passed him a full plate of red meat that they’d all saved. Feuilly, however, had caught his curious stare and met it head-on, the same way he did everything. “What?”

“Oh,” Marius waved his fork at the plate, “I just, I mean it makes sense, but I didn’t know anemia was a side effect…”

“Side effect?” Feuilly held his gaze. “It’s not a condition.”

“No, no, of course not.” Marius fidgeted until Feuilly diverted his eyes to his dinner.

He caught up to him as they were leaving the Great Hall. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound--that is, I hadn’t thought--I’ve just…” He started fidgeting again. “I’ve never actually met part-humans before. Much less talked to them about their…” Not condition. “Identity.”

Feuilly cocked his head to the side. “What do you consider yourself, then?”

Marius blinked.

“Wasn’t your father a werewolf?”

He hadn’t thought about it that way. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I mean, I never met him, and lycanthropy isn’t hereditary, and...well,” he ran a hand over Mabeuf’s envelope in his pocket, “I only know one person who knew him, and he does consider it a condition. Something that happened to him.”

Feuilly looked thoughtful. It was edging toward that expression he wore while composing Muggle Studies essays. (His intense expression, Courfeyrac would, correctly, say.) “So you’ve never even thought about it as something in your DNA.”

“My what?”

“Muggle science. It’s pretty fascinating. But anyway,” Feuilly continued, leaving Marius as utterly in the dark about DNA as before, “you and your father have my sympathies. But it isn’t the same for me.”

This, Marius could get his head around. “I understand.”

“Good.” Feuilly smiled and hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. “Sorry to run now, but I’ve got twelve inches to finish for Defense and some research for Magical Creatures and a star chart for 11:30 pm on October fourth, so, I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

Marius might have felt snubbed, or further chastened, but this was Feuilly. He was probably leaving out at least two more assignments he had to finish by morning. “Yeah, tomorrow.”

\--

Incidents of such sheer awkwardness as that dinner decreased in frequency as he attended more meetings, thankfully. At least they never got as embarrassing as the first one. Marius had almost not returned after that. He’d spent more and more of his time reading, his father’s letter and his schoolbooks by turns; he didn’t interact much outside of basic pleasantries with his dorm-mates. Most of them seemed content to avoid awkwardness by letting Marius be.

Courfeyrac had no such qualms.

Marius didn’t know how Courfeyrac found the time to pay him as much attention as he did. Courfeyrac had friends everywhere and admirers galore, and he knew it; he could strike up a conversation at the drop of a hat, and he seemed to always have an invitation to something--meals with friends, parties with acquaintances, clandestine meetings with girls. Actually, Marius wasn’t sure how Courfeyrac even found time for schoolwork in between all his social butterflying. (Not to mention his indiscriminate flirting with the professors.) The point was, Courfeyrac was busy. He was warm and social and never still. He made steady Combeferre laugh and statuesque Enjolras hug back when hugged and every girl he spoke to feel pretty (and he spoke to all of them). Marius never learned how to interact with kids like that, or, due to his grandfather’s sheltering, how to interact with kids much at all. He’d been the odd one out for four years at Beauxbatons, even though his professors praised his academic performance; he told himself he shouldn’t have been surprised to find himself so at Hogwarts too.

Courfeyrac, on the other hand, refused to acknowledge this--he partnered with Marius every chance he got, talked to him every day, waved at him from whichever table he sat at at every meal. He let it slide when Marius missed the second meeting of the week, but when the next week rolled around he was having none of it.

“Oh, no no no,” he said, slinging an arm around Marius’s neck--trapping him. “See, if you stop coming, you won’t talk to anybody.” Marius couldn't argue the point, Courfeyrac had basic observational skills. “And if that happens, you’ll get all solitary and broody and take yourself way too seriously. It would be a failure in my duty as best friend to allow that. I refuse.”

Marius blinked. Best friend?

Courfeyrac smiled sweetly like a cat at a cornered mouse. “Plus, we all live in one castle, R knows all the secret passages, and I know how to bribe him. You wouldn’t last a day avoiding me.”

Marius believed him. Oddly enough, he felt rather happy about it.

\--

There were times, though, he thought he might have done better to avoid the trap that was this group of friends. For example, the time Prouvaire and Bahorel debated over his head whether lilac or fuschia was more his color and shushed him every time he tried to escape, while R laughed himself sick at the look on his face.

Bahorel looked and acted much more like Marius would normally have thought of a Beater than his Quidditch partner did. He was two years older, a few inches taller, and half again as broad; he was loud and boisterous. He had a record of detentions for fistfights, which, at a school for magic, seemed excessive. He did, however, care as much about clothes and as little about dress code as Prouvaire (winning the argument on the side of lilac by, Marius decided, sheer volume), though he tended more toward the flashy than the garish. The lining of Bahorel’s school robes was a brilliant scarlet, the color darting out from his sleeves and hem with every movement; his lapels matched, and were perhaps a tad broader and more flared than regulation, though as he said, “they’ll never prove it.”

“All-black is the most boring they could possibly get,” he complained during Marius’ very first conversation with him. “They can believe it’s House solidarity all they want, but really, I’m just not letting a dress code smother my style.” He plopped (very well-shined-)leather-booted feet on top of his desk. Marius wondered whether he wore outfits with more flair under his school robes, simply for the satisfaction.

Bossuet, who had NEWT-level Herbology with him, nodded in affirmation. “He has the most elaborately tailored dragonskin _gardening gloves_ I’ve ever seen.”

Bahorel flipped him the bird. “So, young Pontmercy,” he intoned with great and unconvincing solemnity, “if you ever need tips on how to fight the system by looking good, we’ve got you covered.”

“And if anyone gives you shit for it,” Jehan Prouvaire added serenely from a few seats over, today draped in what appeared to be a polka-dotted feather boa, “we have access to Beaters’ bats.”

\--

Most of their friends laughed when Prouvaire offered bodily injury to the deserving (not that they didn’t believe him, it was just an entertaining image), except Joly. Joly never laughed about bodily injury of any kind--instead, he had a tendency to start fidgeting and listing possible side effects. Bossuet, on the other hand (Marius had given up on his real name, no one seemed to use it), laughed enough for both of them. He defrayed Joly’s nerves almost by instinct, never going too far from him to be unable to do so.

Joly and Bossuet, Marius was learning, came as a pair.

The closeness of the friendship struck him as odd, at first. Given Joly’s anxiety about health and well-being--even when he wasn’t feeling nervous, he regularly checked himself for symptoms, and had more than once asked Marius to lay a hand on his forehead and tell him if it didn’t seem hot to him--Bossuet’s accident-prone-ness couldn’t exactly give Joly peace of mind. Plus, they’d never shared a dorm or a class since Bossuet was one year older.

“Two years, actually,” Joly informed him from across the common room, crowded onto a sofa with a sprawling Bossuet and half-hidden behind a centuries-old medical text he had somehow gotten permission to remove from the library.

Marius looked to Bossuet in confusion. “But you’re in class with Bahorel…?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m a sixth year,” Bossuet answered. “There was just an admissions...mess.” When Marius didn’t look any more enlightened, he sighed and explained, “Dad’s side of the family’s mostly in France, yeah? I’ve lived there too, we were expecting Beauxbatons, which didn’t make everyone too happy since, y’know, _romanichel_. But we were with Mum’s family the summer I was eleven and apparently the French Ministry decided that made me Britain’s problem. British Ministry didn’t agree.” He crooked a smile at the memory of his own misfortune. “Mum appealed directly to Hogwarts in the end, but by the time Myriel guilted everyone into ditching all the red tape I was just gonna have to make the year up anyway, so.” He shrugged. “Worked out in the end.”

“They couldn’t arrange to catch you up at home?” Enjolras had done that for three years, and it seemed to have been effective.

Bossuet smiled indulgently. “No one was paying for a tutor. And no one in my family felt qualified to teach me wand magic.”

Marius blinked. “As opposed to...Potions?”

“As opposed to wandless,” Joly interjected, and turned a page in his book.

“But everyone has that, it’s not controllable.”

“Nah.” Bossuet turned another page of Joly’s book from four feet away with a flick of his hand, and then turned it back, tickling Joly’s nose with it until Joly dissolved into giggles, holding the book at arm’s length. “You just get wands rather than learn how control it.” He grinned wider at Marius’ shocked expression. “It’s a big world, there’s more than one way to do magic. Ask Prouvaire sometime.”

“Some people think Bossuet’s hopeless, or possibly cursed,” Joly said, giving up on the book, “but he already knew plenty of the syllabus just fine without a wand.”

“Stupid sticks,” Bossuet added cheerfully.

“So he doesn’t hang out with those people. He hangs out with us!”

Bossuet gave Joly a fond smile. “Met these loons second year. Tried to practice my Levitation Charm, accidentally blasted myself down a staircase, sat up to see Courf laughing like a hyena and Joly checking for concussion.”

“And R?” Marius asked, since he rarely saw the other boy out of the company of either Bossuet or Joly.

Bossuet laughed out loud. “R was mad at me for stealing his best friend, but then some jackass pranked Joly and we got stuck in detention together for hexing him.” Joly’s reproachful prod did not dim his evident satisfaction. “So, that worked out too.”

\--

R’s real name was Grantaire, which Marius knew because Courfeyrac used it very pointedly when he got annoyed with him--and as it turned out, only Joly and Bossuet regularly called him anything else. They alone seemed unaffected by Grantaire’s powers of annoyance, as Joly let everything slide off him with a smile, while Bossuet threw snark right back in his face; but otherwise those powers seemed unstoppable. Grantaire could talk on any subject for any length of time, whether he had a point or not, whether he was making his listeners laugh or bang their heads against their desks. Marius still wasn’t entirely clear on why Grantaire came to meetings, since the favorite topic of these ramblings seemed to be The Pointlessness of It All. In a single speech Marius had heard him use statistics on wizarding discrimination against other magical communities, statistics on discrimination of other magical communities against each other, the sheer number of internal wars among the goblins alone, anecdotes about hilarious Muggle depictions of wizards (and vice versa), the results of the last Quidditch World Cup, and laments about the declining quality (to the observant consumer) of butterbeer to support this point.

The members of the group had built up varying levels of immunity to Grantaire, approaches ranging from laughing along (Bahorel) to threats of strangulation (also Bahorel) to patience (Combeferre) to pointed neglect (Enjolras).

Enjolras and Combeferre were the ones who never called him R. It was, in fact, by Combeferre that Marius first heard Grantaire addressed by his actual name, and it made him beam with delight. “That’s clever!”

Grantaire bowed as much as he could while sitting down with his legs slung over a desk. “I live for the days when people get my puns.”

“Anyone who speaks French gets that one,” Enjolras interjected frostily, without looking up from what he was doing.

“Which is not everyone,” Feuilly pointed out, and Enjolras did look up then. He looked chastened. Marius had known him for a week and that already felt somehow unnatural.

“You’re right, of course,” he told Feuilly earnestly.

Combeferre was, as usual, impassive but for a slight upward tick at the corner of his mouth, which was no help at all. Marius turned back to Grantaire instead, but the other boy was looking right past him at Enjolras talking to Feuilly. His smile was surprisingly gentle. It made Marius almost as uneasy as readily-accepted chastisement on Enjolras did--or at the very least, felt like something nobody ought to be watching.

Marius turned away again, more confused than ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~ Re: facecasts--I wanted them to look the right age, so some are not my usual automatic facecasts while others are "I found younger photos of this dude that look right." There was a lot of Googling of cast members of various productions of the musical and irately failing to find Roma actors involved in this process. I know Grantaire is too attractive, but...the entertainment industry :/ and I know Bossuet has hair, but he's only 16, give him time. ;) The other pictures in there are mostly from the Brick (E's Incendio vs. Ferre's Lumos, Courf's cat), things that make me happy (E and R's passionflower, or in flowerspeak, belief), and things that actually have to do with this AU (Beaters' bats, Feuilly's shades, Bossuet's wandless magic and Felix Felicis.) (It has been tried, since Bossuet is actually good at Potions given that no wands are required; but the bottle would always get broken or lost. His friends tried spiking his breakfast with it behind his back, figuring his bad luck couldn't interfere if he wasn't involved, but he was deeply uncomfortable when he found out, so they've stopped.)) 
> 
> ~ The [Antinous Ecouen](https://www.google.com/search?q=antinous+ecouen&espv=2&biw=942&bih=917&tbm=isch&imgil=u1DeYj9YCL1T1M%253A%253Bu8SZV43UoeoPrM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fimgur.com%25252Fgallery%25252FnWrmkRu&source=iu&pf=m&fir=u1DeYj9YCL1T1M%253A%252Cu8SZV43UoeoPrM%252C_&usg=__m3PVE8G_4KMRVh7RjYYEXYx8sd0%3D&ved=0CDAQyjdqFQoTCKbu7r6o78cCFUZpPgodifcFXQ&ei=2fXyVeadFcbS-QGJ75foBQ#imgrc=_&usg=__m3PVE8G_4KMRVh7RjYYEXYx8sd0%3D), a whole bunch of [Botticelli](http://www.wga.hu/support/viewer_m/z.html) [angels](http://www.canvaz.com/botticelli/botticelli-40.jpg). Of course R knows tidbits about beautiful Muggle art.
> 
> ~ You may have gathered that I have some...frustration with Marius and his development in the second half of the Brick. So I had Courfeyrac avert it for me. High five, Courf.
> 
> ~ romanichel = French (masculine) word for Roma. My wizarding France doesn't seem to like them much more than real France. (Edit: there are other terms, which might not be out of character for Bossuet to mock, but which I...did not feel comfortable with using.)
> 
> ~ Seriously, the entire world can't use the same methods for channeling magic as the Western European tradition does, and wouldn't Jehan be fascinated by, say, the differences between East Asian and South Asian magic systems? <3.
> 
> ~ Credit to Wells for Enjolras' ducklings, and to Roxie for Jehan's magical color-shifting glitter-scarf. 
> 
> ...I think I have abused the notes section enough for one chapter. Shall sign off now--thanks for sticking around!


	4. Chapter 4 (Éponine)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Éponine meets a boy. And then nine more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Éponine facecast!](http://www.mediafire.com/view/qhh5u7w61dgo0jm/les_amies_-_Copy.png)

Éponine was eating breakfast alone, again.

Not that this bothered her, necessarily. She had always been self-sufficient, even back before she had to be. Her classmates had picked up on this in first year and were used to giving her space. (Probably also to looking down on her, but she couldn’t be bothered to care.) Of the older students in her House, the only ones she knew as more than casual acquaintances were Montparnasse and his posse and, knowing them, she preferred to spend as little time with them as possible; of the younger Slytherins, the only one she cared about was Azelma.

They saw each other regularly, but her little sister didn’t eat breakfast with her, either.

They used to talk about everything--well, Éponine did. Azelma often preferred to listen. But then Éponine had gone off to Hogwarts, and it turned out they were much worse at letter-exchanges than conversation--there were all sorts of things to tell her siblings, so much she wanted to share with them, could only share with them, but every time she sat down in front of a piece of parchment she just...didn’t know how. She ended up doing her homework on the intended letter instead, and told herself it was good time management. Then just before Christmas, her parents ordered her to stay at school for the holidays where she’d be fed for free, and Éponine didn’t see her sister for nearly a year. When she got back for the summer, they’d hugged and huddled together and talked for hours and Éponine had told all the stories she had saved up, but they were all stories from another world to Azelma. Even when she’d joined that world herself in the fall, it was never quite the same after that year.

Éponine was eating breakfast alone and she had no mail, again.

She never allowed herself to get her hopes up for a letter from Gavroche--while she was closer to him than Azelma was, they weren’t exactly birds of a feather (he had no memories of ever giving a damn about their parents, for one thing). Plus he was only nine, and not fond of letter-writing. So she wasn’t surprised at the lack of an owl; Gavroche’s were the only letters she ever received.

All in all, the day was starting out as a perfectly average day.

She resigned herself to it becoming a shitty day when, in first period, her Potions partner blew up their assignment (she’d warned him about stirring the wrong way, but Gryffindors didn’t take well to instruction, the morons); the certainty was only reinforced in second period, when the actual professor knocked her inkwell over onto her notes with an overenthusiastic gesticulation. The thundercloud of the day’s shittiness hanging over her at least had the effect of making Montparnasse back off, so she was left to eat her lunch in peace. By the time fourth period (Transfiguration) rolled around and she realized on her way to class that the ten-inch essay which had definitely been in her bag at breakfast was missing, she was tempted to set fire to something and just give up on this whole day.

But Transfiguration was not a class she could afford lower marks in, certainly not during OWLs year, so she repressed the urge to kick the nearest suit of armor and retraced her steps.

Her essay wasn’t lying around in any of the hallways outside third or second period, or the Great Hall. She wasn’t keen to go barging into the middle of classes, especially not knowing whether she would even find anything if she did, so she just cast a Revelio under the door of each room--if anybody saw her crouching by the doorjamb and so much as raised an eyebrow she would hex them--to no avail. By the time she got to the empty Great Hall she was thinking about just using Accio, but she still remembered Babet’s Summoned Fanged Frisbee knocking a dozen paintings askew only to crumple itself against a door. She cursed and headed for the dungeons to see if she’d dropped her essay on her way to first period.

She hadn’t.

Somebody must have found it, one of those Hufflepuffs whom she’d passed on the way down, maybe; one of them could have picked it up for “safekeeping” and decided to go find the owner themselves. _Hufflepuffs_. There was always the possibility of having left it in the actual Potions room, though. Better to be sure before she started hunting anyone down. She pulled out her wand and hunkered down. And was almost hit in the face by the opening door.

“Oh--oh I’m sorry!” Éponine heard the door shut behind the person who’d nearly broken her nose as she scrabbled to her feet. Of all the idiotic ways to be caught. She kept a tight grip on her wand, fully prepared to hex, consequences be damned. This _day_. “I’m so sorry,” the boy went on, “I didn’t know there was anyone there. I shouldn’t have--I just stayed behind to ask about--you don’t care, I’m sorry.”

He was right that she didn’t care. She was, however, trained to be quick on the uptake, and she automatically assessed the person in front of her. She put together awkward stammering, overly precise accent, and anxious self-recrimination for the offense of opening a door and came up with _new kid_ \--new to both school and country. There was only one of those.

Of course, there were other possible conclusions, like socially inept, but that seemed to tally fairly well with what she’d gathered about the transfer student from basic awareness of her surroundings.

This was the first time they’d ever come face-to-face, though. She catalogued his appearance and filed the information away. It didn’t take more than a few seconds, but something about it seemed to discomfit him further. “Um, do I know you?” he asked.

“No,” she said shortly.

He held out a hand. “I’m Marius. Pontmercy.”

She kept her grip on her wand. “I know.”

“Oh.” His hand dropped, fiddled with the strap of his satchel. “Everyone seems to. I suppose overseas transfer in OWL year isn’t the done thing.”

“You’re in my Arithmancy class.”

“Oh.” He looked startled at that. “I didn’t recognize you. I’m sorry.”

Éponine really, really didn’t have time for this. She was going to be late for Transfiguration, and this boy was going to be late for whatever it was he had next, and she still hadn’t found her essay. This conversation was stilted and awkward, and she should extract herself from it. She shouldn’t waste time chatting with pretty, earnest, overly-apologetic boys who didn’t recognize her.

So why wasn’t she leaving?

“Is the classroom empty, then?” she asked abruptly. When he blinked and said “yes?” she for some reason didn’t open the door and go in to find her homework, instead continuing “Only I might have left something in there, I can’t find it anywhere else.”

“Oh!” He said that a lot, didn’t he? “This--is this yours?” He rummaged in his bag to pull out a ten-inch roll of parchment. “It was stuck halfway under a cabinet--”

She snatched the parchment away, unrolled it enough to check the name. “That’s mine.”

“Oh, good.” He looked relieved. “I didn’t have the first idea where to start looking, I didn’t want to be the reason somebody lost a whole essay’s worth.”

She nodded. She didn’t say anything. But she still didn’t leave.

The boy--Marius--cleared his throat. “Well, I’m running late for Defense…”

“Right, Transfiguration.” She shook herself. “I’m late for Transfiguration. That’s what the essay’s for.” She held it up, unnecessarily. And then she felt like slapping her own hand down. Today was not her day.

Marius only smiled, though. It was a very nice smile. “It’s a good thing you’ve found it, then.”

“Yeah.” Éponine stuffed the roll of parchment into her bag, gestured vaguely upward with her free hand. “Shall we?”

She wasn’t sure why she’d said that, what had possessed her to prolong the awkwardness. Marius certainly didn’t seem to have been expecting it either, but said, “Yes, of course,” and walked her to the Entrance Hall. After he split off to go upstairs (looking surprised, again, at her “see you” but returning it anyway), she stood outside the Transfiguration room door for five more minutes wondering what all that had been about, and whether today was still a shitty day. Not that she had a concrete reason to feel better about it.

She ended up being a total of twenty minutes late to class.

\---

Marius was sitting in the third row when she walked into Arithmancy the next day.

Éponine usually sat safely and anonymously further back and off to the side; but she was good at Arithmancy. She could stand to be front and center here.

Before she’d really thought this impulse through, she found herself marching up the aisle to Marius’ desk. “Hi.”

He looked up. “Oh,” he said, and Éponine really should have found that default monosyllable irritating by now. And yet. “Hello, Éponine.”

She blinked. “Who told you my name was Éponine?” It certainly hadn’t been her. She’d spent a good portion of yesterday evening trying to figure out whether she should berate or congratulate herself for that.

“It was on your essay.” Marius blushed along his cheekbones and the tops of his ears, she noted. “I promise I didn’t read the actual text, I just wanted to find out who I should look for--is it all right if I call you Éponine?” He was suddenly anxious. “Only everyone seems to go by their surnames here…”

“It’s fine.” It was really nice, actually. Azelma was the only one at Hogwarts who called her by her first name, and they hardly spoke. She would probably have cursed anyone else she knew if they presumed to use it. But it was somehow warming that Marius knew her as Éponine. “Call me Éponine.”

She sat down at the desk next to him, just as the person who usually sat there came up the aisle. The other student glared, so she must not know much about Éponine; expressions like that had absolutely no effect. She tried coughing pointedly; this did get Éponine to look up, but staring Éponine down also had no effect. The displaced student learned this the hard way and, after a measly eleven seconds of going from starer- to stared-down, left for another seat without a word.

Marius smiled his nice smile at Éponine. Utterly unaware of any of the discomfort, she thought; just glad she was there. She smiled back.

\---

Éponine sat next to Marius in every Arithmancy lesson after that. He wasn’t the liveliest of company; one of those diligently studious types. But he got so buried in his note-taking, nose so close to the parchment that ink speckled it as he scribbled...she got entertainment enough from just watching him.

Obliviously ink-speckled was also a pretty cute look on him.

She was still eating breakfast alone, but she could always find Marius two tables over, smiling with his friends, hair carefully combed each morning. (It was always at least slightly mussed by lunch.) It was a bit of a novel feeling to be keeping an eye out for a person in the crowd who made her smile, rather than one who put her on her guard. Not that she could stop doing that completely, Montparnasse had yet to graduate and/or accept that last spring holiday had been a one-time thing, but it was a nice break.

Marius was slightly harder to find at lunches and dinners, just because there were more options. The boys he hung out with seemed to make a habit of crashing other Houses’ tables or dragging their friends from other Houses over to Hufflepuff to eat with them. It was always the same assortment of friends--nine of them, whom Éponine could probably identify by House, height, and hair color without even having to think about it by now, but she didn’t pay them much attention. She definitely had classes with a few, but she didn’t know any of them besides Marius. There weren’t any Slytherins in the group; she’d given up on them ever coming to sit at her table. But sometimes they ate with the Ravenclaws, just across the aisle. She was grateful for his multi-House friends when they did. More often they ate with the Gryffindors, all the way across the hall. She was less charitable toward them then.

On Arithmancy days, she always waited until a few minutes after Marius left lunch to head for class. She could easily have caught up to him or tailed him without being seen, he wasn’t exactly attentive, but she was his friend, not his stalker. (She thought they were friends. Acquaintances? Not-just-classmates?) It was a complete coincidence when, a week or so into October, she ran into him in the doorway of the Great Hall--she’d seen him get up to go to Arithmancy five minutes ago, but it turned out he’d spilled the contents of his satchel over half the Entrance Hall, and he was still scrambling to collect everything and keep people from trampling any of it when she headed out. Éponine almost laughed, surprising herself; she realized she hadn’t laughed since saying goodbye to Gavroche at the beginning of the year.

She helped Marius pick up his notes and his books, and then they walked to class together. And then they walked to class together twice a week, every week.

And then he brought her to meet his friends. Somehow it felt like an accomplishment.

\---

“They’re a society of what?”

“Friends to the oppressed,” he said, and for Merlin’s sake _earnest_ was an even more ridiculously entertaining look on him than _obliviously ink-speckled_.

“And they do...what?”

“Talk.” She had to consciously suppress a snort. “About issues confronting those who’re badly treated in wizarding society, and what we can do--some of them have contacts outside school, and some of them are friendly with the faculty, and get permission for petitions. And we’ve discussed plans for raising student awareness, but I think they got in trouble for something like that last year…” Oh, yes. The bowtruckle incident. It had taken weeks to round up all the poky little buggers. “And they talk to all the marginalized populations represented on campus, over the year--they want to include the merfolk this year, because I told them I’m studying Mermish.”

Marius’ pleased blush at that, more than anything else, swayed her to think the group might not be a complete waste of time.

Even after she agreed to come to a meeting, he didn’t stop regaling her with tales about how wonderful his friends were the whole way there. She tried to match the images and names stored in the back of her head with his accounts. The veela boy that Marius always deferred to so quickly at mealtimes was Enjolras, she knew. The Ravenclaw Marius always seemed nervous to sit next to must be this intimidating Combeferre. The vampire boy who was in her Potions class with Enjolras, and much more sensible than her idiot partner apparently, was Feuilly. The deliberately-messy-haired Hufflepuff whose shadow Marius was must be Courfeyrac. “The first proper friend I had, I think,” Marius said quietly, and okay. These boys weren’t a waste of time.

He stopped talking when they entered the room, which was, she thought fondly, typically Marius in timing; it left a roomful of nine boys all looking at her expectantly with no introduction forthcoming.

They all looked rather thrown, too. She wondered how often they got any new members.

“What, am I disrupting the boys’ club?”

Up at the front of the room, Courfeyrac broke into the widest grin she’d ever seen on a human face. “I like her.”

He was _that_ type of boy. She answered his smile with one of her own, the one that made grown men tremble, but he seemed unfazed. She was grudgingly impressed. But she didn’t show it; she didn’t care whether anyone here liked her besides Marius.

\---

Later that night, that thought kept her awake.

It didn’t make sense, she realized, that she cared so exclusively about Marius compared to his friends. Now that she’d met them all--they hadn’t ostracized her at all, in fact they’d insisted on socializing, they could be kind of exhausting all together in a group--she couldn’t pin down why Marius stood out. He was sweet; so was Jehan, if not more so. He was smart; so was Combeferre, who was possibly the most intelligent person in the castle. Marius wasn’t the best-looking (Enjolras definitely won that prize), or the most accomplished on his own merit (Feuilly for sure), and definitely didn’t have the best sense of humor (Bossuet, she decided, though Courfeyrac was in the running too). She’d had the least time to form a judgment of Marius, since she’d known of his existence barely more than a month but had been classmates with the others for years. Enjolras’ arrival last year had even kicked up a bigger fuss--of course it had, he was Enjolras, those who did not swoon before him quailed. All the boys made her roll her eyes a bit, since she didn’t generally have any patience for naïveté--Grantaire would have been the one to go to for sympathy on that front, if he weren’t so irritating--but Marius was the most unbearably innocent puppy of them all, and it just made her smile.

He had that effect on her. From the first day, when he’d nearly opened a door into her face and apologized instead of laughed, and ever since, when he continued to smile when he recognized her and be with her without wanting anything from her and not try to impress her or cow her or brush her off, and when he invited her to meet his friends...everything about him made her smile.

It was completely irrational.

 _Oh_ , she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lateness! I was out of town. Anyway, here begins the relevance of the POV-Multiple tag. Re: facecasting, I'm thinking Bend-It-Like-Beckham-age Nagra, though there are [more](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--PMGnzJ2Iww/TxZMo7R7S5I/AAAAAAAAC2M/Hyp26K-RuHQ/s0/PN15656386.jpg) [recent](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DJgypKKz0gY/VVGqIMA0WcI/AAAAAAAAEmo/rTupACsKl7I/s512/Parminder%252520Nagra%252520Body%252520Size.JPG) [photos](http://www.pimpmyspacecodes.net/Images/Female_Celebrities/Parminder_Nagra/images/Parminder_Nagra_0222.jpg) that I think make a kickass grown-up Éponine.


	5. Chapter 5 (Éponine)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Éponine has it bad, Enjolras is too serious, Courfeyrac doesn't know the _meaning_ of serious, and Marius doesn't really know anything.

 

Some part of Éponine felt utterly stupid for having fallen for Marius Pontmercy. Some part of her felt stupid for having fallen for anyone at all. The majority of her might have agreed with the first two parts if it weren’t so frequently distracted by a new frisson of awareness every time Marius smiled or said her name.

It didn’t help that, after meeting his friends, she was spending more time with him than ever.

First it was the meetings. Every Tuesday and Thursday night Courfeyrac or Bossuet or Combeferre would wave at her as they all got up to leave dinner, and Marius would follow their gazes and catch sight of her and smile, and she’d join them. She ended up wasting hours each week shadowing Marius while the others talked about goblins and house elves and legislation and plans. She even accepted and actually read the various papers they gave her; she never handed them out among her Housemates as intended, but she was very good at slipping them into places they were sure to be seen when least expected. (Montparnasse had yet to figure out how flyers urging him to give a shit about the world burst out of his textbooks and attacked him when he opened them, but it was _deeply_ satisfying to watch.)

Then it was the mealtimes. At one point Courfeyrac had waved at her at the beginning of dinner instead of the end, and she wasn’t sitting down yet, and Marius had perked up when he noticed and waved as well, and she just...gravitated. Nobody seemed to mind. Courfeyrac freed up the space between himself and Marius for her without so much as a suggestive wink. Enjolras actually _thanked_ her, since apparently “the last thing we want to do is discriminate between Houses, but we’ve never gotten interest from Slytherins before.”

Combeferre took off his glasses and buried his face in his hands. “I think he means ‘Hi, Thenardier,’” Bossuet said dryly from Marius’ other side.

Enjolras gave Bossuet an impatient look. “We already said that, collectively.”

“Were you the one doing the recruiting?” Éponine asked. “For Slytherin. Because that was just a tactical error. You’re the most Gryffindor of the Gryffindors. Send the Eagle.” Bossuet, whom her Housemates would probably find most fun and least obnoxious, beamed at her. Then he knocked over his own goblet, and Joly’s, in an attempt to bow while sitting down. “Or not.”

Bossuet laughed as Joly vacuumed up the spilled drinks with his wand. “Nah, send someone less likely to accidentally destroy the common room. Try R.”

Enjolras only snorted. Éponine might have done the same, if she hadn’t noticed that it took Grantaire a second too long to laugh in response.

Then it was Halloween. She hadn’t _meant_ to invite all of the boys to the Slytherin party, but she’d been sitting with them at the feast and they’d started arguing about which afterparty to go to and Hufflepuff had been winning, for Merlin’s sake--mostly on Courfeyrac’s insistence that neither Gryffindor nor Ravenclaw actually threw “anything resembling a party.” (“That’s because I currently feel too full to move, Courf,” Feuilly said in a long-suffering tone, at which Joly pricked up his ears and asked “Are you losing feeling in any limbs?”) She couldn’t help snorting at the idea.

Courfeyrac turned to her with his cheekiest grin. “That a challenge, Thenardier?”

“Like you can beat a Halloween party held in a dungeon,” she said. And then he’d gotten that gleam of hyperactive enthusiasm in his eye.

And then those ten ridiculous boys were running amok all over her common room, having way too much fun with the dank green lighting and the dubious punch and the looks of suspicion and bemusement they were getting from the dungeon’s residents.

Éponine tried to keep track of them from where she was sitting in a corner next to Marius, who hadn’t moved from the spot since the first and second years had been shunted out of the party and the drinks had become alcoholic. Courfeyrac had given up on cajoling Marius to try some booze and had bounded away to dance (with what looked like every female Slytherin over the age of thirteen), but Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre were still there on Marius’ other side. She wasn’t sure they’d realized they were at a party; they were deep in conversation which, last she’d checked, involved the legitimacy of werewolves living in isolated extralegal packs.

Their little group had a perfect sightline to where Grantaire, somewhat to her surprise, was getting along swimmingly with everyone--probably by entertainment value; the group gathered around him, Joly, and Bossuet was laughing uproariously, and though even his loud voice didn’t carry through the general din his dramatic gesticulations were hard to ignore. Éponine saw Enjolras shoot a narrow-eyed glance their way every time Grantaire paused to drink from his perpetually refilled cup. Or almost knocked over furniture, which occurred with alarming frequency.

Éponine had stopped really listening to the conversation after she’d asked what seemed to her the obvious question, “If they want to be left alone, what’s wrong with leaving them alone?” and Enjolras had gotten very intense about equal opportunity and perpetuation of harmful stereotypes. Marius was still listening, and she paid attention to him instead. He never spoke up, given that Enjolras _and_ Combeferre _and_ Feuilly were involved and he had a hilariously abject respect for each them; but he didn’t need to speak, she thought fondly. She had a perfect vantage point for watching every thought and emotion flicker across his face.

Thus embroiled, none of them looked up when she slipped away to refill her drink. (She’d have asked if they wanted any, but none of them were drinking.) She had a ridiculous momentary urge to pat them all on their one-track-minded little heads.

She skirted along the wall to get to the drinks table, weaving between chairs and tables and bored prefects pretending to keep the alcohol away from first and second years. She was good at slipping unnoticed through a crowd, but cutting through the one in the middle of the room would risk Courfeyrac dragging her into...whatever the hell he was doing, because it looked like no species’ definition of dance. Plus, if Azelma were anywhere in the common room, it’d be out at the quiet edges. Éponine wasn’t surprised not to see her, neither of them normally came to or enjoyed things like these, but she felt a tad guilty for not having checked earlier. It wasn’t enough to ruin her unexpectedly good humor tonight, though. That required Montparnasse levels of mood-killing.

She blamed the unreasonably high volume of the Weird Sisters’ latest hit for the fact that he managed to sneak up on her.

“Hey there,” he said, sliding in next to her at the drinks table. She didn’t look up, but she could _hear_ him preen.

“Bye,” she said, turning away, and he laughed because he truly did not understand the concept of hints. She found he’d caught her between himself and a corner, and had to turn around. Apparently the concept of personal space escaped him as well.

“Lovely to see you too, as ever, Éponine.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. Only one person had been using her first name for the last two months, and it jarred coming from someone else. Particularly this someone else.

Montparnasse raised a carefully-shaped eyebrow. “What, your name? What am I supposed to use? I have scars from the time I tried ‘sweetheart’.”

“My last name _is_ still my name, _Montparnasse_ ,” she said, slowly, because talking to him like he was a child was a much more effective way to put him off than irritation was. Sure enough, he huffed and tossed back his shiny dark hair, and crossed his arms. He had a way of doing it that made sure the glittering rings accentuating both long, pale hands were clearly visible and that his narrow shoulders looked artfully slouched under his tailored robes--the thought occurred to her that she’d pay good money to see him have to sit through one of Prouvaire and Bahorel’s fashion critiques. She also toyed with the idea of introducing him to Enjolras just to enjoy him stewing in envy of the veela boy’s sheer effortlessness. Montparnasse looked good, but he _knew_ he looked good, and he took care to, which was about as un-Enjolras as one could get; he spent at least an hour per morning (she’d timed it) cultivating his sharp-angled, pale-as-death, faux-vampire look. Wait, now she wanted to see him have to talk to Feuilly.

“I’d say we’ve passed the first-name-basis level,” Montparnasse interrupted her wandering thoughts, leaning in, “wouldn’t you? Round about last April?”

And she was back to just being irritated. “How many times do you need to hear the words ‘casual’ and ‘over’ before they sink in?” He laughed again, and she seriously considered emptying her cup on his painstakingly perfect hair. Then he reached for her hand, and she prepared to smash the cup into his face instead.

“Thenardier!” Someone was yelling in her ear all of a sudden. “Hey, Thenardier!” An arm slung itself around her shoulders and she almost redirected her cup-smashing intent toward the person attached, but it turned out to be Courfeyrac. So she only shrugged sharply. He let his arm fall at once, tugging at her sleeve instead. “Come here, you won’t _believe_ what Bahorel’s gotten into, can’t take him anywhere, I swear--” And before Montparnasse could do more than look murderous, Courfeyrac darted away through the thickest part of the crowd with Éponine in tow.

He let go of her sleeve as soon as Montparnasse’s view was blocked, and she looked up at him suspiciously. If he expected thanks for barging in to get rid of her problems, he had another thing coming. But he only grinned crookedly at her, his artfully messy hair now properly messy from all the flinging himself about, and said “Last I saw Bahorel he was trying to arm-wrestle four guys at once, two to an arm, and I think he might have been winning? Because they didn’t look too happy.” He craned his neck as they pushed toward the edge of the room. “But now he’s gone again. I should probably be worried, shouldn’t I?” He considered, then shrugged. “Nah.”

Combeferre looked up as Courfeyrac plopped down next to him and immediately sprawled--all on top of Combeferre, though, leaving room for Éponine to sit on his other side. “Ferre, darling! Any sign of Bahorel?”

“No.” Combeferre looked down at his friend over his glasses. “Though if he’s in anything approaching your state, his captain’s going to have words for him at Quidditch practice tomorrow.”

“This is my natural state!” Courfeyrac replied indignantly. “I am always a ball of fun and good times. Hardly enhanced at all.”

“I don’t think he could drink enough to still be hungover at the match,” Éponine put in over Courfeyrac’s grumbling. “He’s got two whole days to get over it. Plus, he’s Bahorel.” The boy was a head taller and heavier on the muscle than any of them.

Combeferre smiled. “Plus, if he’s hungover long enough for his professors to notice he’ll be banned from all matches for the foreseeable future.”

“Plus,” Courfeyrac said from Combeferre’s lap, “we’ve almost drained all your guys’ booze and he was _still_ beating four guys at arm-wrestling.”

“Plus he’d have Jehan on his case if he jeopardized their game,” Combeferre finished. “The most effective incentive by far.”

Éponine looked across the room to where Prouvaire was visible above the crowd, perched on the mantelpiece and trying to engage the affronted-looking portrait of Salazar Slytherin in conversation. He might have his own overindulgence to regret in the morning. Though, this being Prouvaire, he could just as easily be completely sober up there.

Courfeyrac tugged at her sleeve again. She withdrew her arm automatically. He dropped the physical contact, but was not at all discouraged from talking. “Hey Thenardier, you coming with us on Saturday?”

She blinked. “To the Quidditch match?”

“Yah, to cheer obnoxiously loud for Prouvaire and Bahorel.”

“They’re playing _against_ Slytherin,” Combeferre reminded him, before turning to Éponine. “We congregate in the Gryffindor stands for their matches, but we could move to Hufflepuff if you’d join us. In the interest of neutrality.”

She almost laughed at the earnestness of the offer. “I know you lot better than I know the Slytherin Quidditch team. Not like I’d root for them anyway.”

Courfeyrac cocked his head at her, by now almost completely upside-down on the couch. “Would you usually?”

Éponine shrugged. “Usually I don’t go.”

He boggled. “Well that just settles it! You’ve _got_ to come.” He threw himself across Combeferre, who barely leaned back in time to save his glasses, to get the attention of the still-debating Enjolras and Feuilly and the still-listening Marius. “Guys! ’Ponine should come to the Quidditch match with us, right?” The discussion--now about mass production of the Wolfsbane Potion--paused long enough for everyone to blink at Courfeyrac; Enjolras nodded and went right back to bouncing possible funders off Feuilly, who flashed her a thumbs-up. Marius noticed her, and smiled. She really ought to be annoyed at them all for using a nickname she hadn’t even told them about, having nearly bit Montparnasse’s head off for less, but screw consistency, Marius was smiling at her. She couldn’t help it--she smiled back.

Before she remembered to actually say anything, there was a loud crash from the corner by the fireplace.

Every head in the room turned. “Was that…” Enjolras, properly distracted, half stood and craned his neck. Éponine could pinpoint the moment Grantaire’s hysterical laughter reached his ears; his expression morphed into a scowl. “That was Bossuet.”

“Hey Prouvaire!” Bahorel bellowed over the music, from somewhere in the midst of the crowd. Maybe from the floor; Éponine still couldn’t see him. “Was that Bossuet?”

The redhead leaned as far over as he could without falling off the mantel. He nodded, straightened back up, cupped his hands around his mouth to yell back. “Fell in the punch bowl.”

\---

Éponine wound up in the Hufflepuff stands that Saturday, surrounded by the promised obnoxiously loud cheering. Courfeyrac and Bossuet were responsible for most of it; Éponine counted three times before the first goal that Joly yelped and tugged at Bossuet’s robes, crying “Careful, you’ll fall!” Granted, it was Bossuet. He actually might. Grantaire didn’t so much participate as keep up a running commentary on the match in response to the official one, which she ought to have expected, really.

“Why didn’t you go out for the job, then?” she called from the row below, where she was busy keeping Marius from falling out of his seat every time Courfeyrac made a piercing noise behind him. Five solid minutes of attacking the commentator’s bias, however witty, _demanded_ interruption, for all their sanity.

Grantaire shrugged, kicking up his legs to rest on the seat in front of him. Feuilly sighed behind his dark glasses (full sunlight was apparently very uncomfortable for his eyes) and pushed Grantaire’s feet away from his face. “I’d have to have a vested interest in Quidditch. Didn’t know anyone who played ’til last year. Plus,” he added wryly, “people just wouldn’t know how to appreciate my overuse of expletives. And regular digressions about the meaning of life.”

“Or lack of meaning,” Enjolras spoke up from the front row, determinedly ignoring the pair of boots between his face and Feuilly’s. “Considering the speaker.”

The boots were withdrawn with a thump. “Can’t argue with that,” their owner muttered.

Éponine turned her attention back to the match. She was _not_ getting in the middle of that.

Prouvaire and Bahorel worked well together, splitting the job in various ways as the game progressed. When the whole team was driving for a goal, Prouvaire defended them against Bludgers while Bahorel did his level best to smash the other team with them. When their players were more spread out they split the field, or each kept his eye on one Bludger. They themselves seemed very pleased with their teamwork. Each successful goal had them whacking their bats together in a highly aggressive sort of high-five. Éponine wasn’t in the habit of underestimating people, but she had to admit to surprise that Bahorel hadn’t knocked Prouvaire off his broom yet.

They didn’t need many goals before their Seeker--a tiny dark-haired blur of girl--pulled out of a twenty-meter dive with the Snitch clutched in her fist, and the Gryffindor side of the stands exploded. By contrast, Éponine’s two remaining Gryffindors were positively sedate compared to the Hufflepuff boys suddenly screeching behind her. Marius finally did fall out of his seat. “We won?”

Éponine helped him up, suppressing a grin. The grating hyper-competitive atmosphere and screaming had been the reason she’d avoided Quidditch matches for years, but it was somehow endearing this time around. “They won.”

“THEY WON!” Courfeyrac almost toppled Marius over again by throwing his arms around him from behind. “Aw man that was amazing!” He let go of Marius once he’d squeezed all the breath out of him, and turned to Éponine, who automatically flinched. He froze. “Um, your team lost, though. Ah...sympathy hugs?” He held out his arms, not near enough to touch her.

She whacked at them, laughing. “What are you, a koala?”

He relaxed again, grinning. “I’m flattered, koalas are _adorable_.” He turned to Combeferre on her other side and bellowed “Koala time!” before launching into a stranglehold from behind that knocked the Ravenclaw’s glasses askew. Combeferre hardly twitched.

Éponine laughed harder--genuine laughter; she was surprised at how little she wanted to stop, in spite of having to gasp for air. The tentative smile on Marius’ face as he watched his friends’ antics felt even better.

“Come on, come on!” Feuilly was on his feet and pushing down the row. “Before the stairs are packed! We’ve got to see how many of us it takes to lift Bahorel onto our shoulders.”

“As of last year?” Combeferre said, patiently waiting for Bossuet to disentangle him from Courfeyrac’s koala arms. “Four.”

They were some of the first to make it onto the pitch, where the Gryffindor team was having a collective conniption, but they wouldn’t be alone for long--they all broke into a run as the crowd began to flood the field, whooping. Even Enjolras, Éponine was mildly shocked to see, grinned widely when Prouvaire and Bahorel hollered at them in welcome. She hadn’t been sure his facial muscles knew how to make that expression. She was completely out of breath and somehow enjoying it by the time they reached the Gryffindor team and Prouvaire barreled straight into Combeferre so hard that he fell into the person behind him. This being Courfeyrac, it quickly became a group hug situation. Bahorel then made a heroic effort to pick up the entire group hug. “Wait wait wait you’re going to drop--” Joly wailed, as Bossuet slid out of Bahorel’s not-quite-long-enough arms and hit the ground with a thud.

“’M okay,” Éponine heard him say. “No one trample me.” Which of course prompted Grantaire to sit on him.

They nearly were trampled when the flood of students finally reached them; as it was, everyone was swept off their feet, literally in the case of the Gryffindor Seeker, who laughed and covered her face with her hands. Cheerfully disregarding her embarrassment, her teammates crowdsurfed her toward the locker rooms. The entire way there, Bahorel kept yelling “VICTORY CELEBRATION IN THE GRYFFINDOR COMMON ROOM!” in case anyone had somehow not heard him the first five times.

Éponine was going, even though two parties in a week had to be a personal record, and she’d be a Slytherin gatecrashing a celebration of her defeat, and knowing Gryffindors they probably wouldn’t have anything stronger than butterbeer. What mattered was that Marius and his ridiculous friends would be there.

It took her a second to realize that Marius wasn't next to her.

"Marius?" She stopped immediately, and found him only a few steps behind, wandering off after the team in the direction of the locker room. "Marius!" He looked over at her at the sound of his name, and blinked. "That's team-only. The party's this way." He cast a final lingering look at the door shutting behind the Quidditch team before catching up to her. "You'll see them there," she reminded him. She couldn't help but be amused--that familiar frisson of warmth--at the confusion for his friends that was just so very Marius.

  "I will," he said, sounding oddly dazed. "I--oh, what will I _say_?"

  "Congratulations?" she suggested. He nodded his head almost frantically. "Are you...ok? Was it the crowd? You seem kind of distracted."

"I can't help it." He raised a hand to his face, didn't seem to know what to do with it, let it drop again. "I mean, did you see her?"

And that was the first time Éponine felt something puncture the day’s happiness, because none of their friends were girls, and Marius didn’t talk about friends like that. No one did. “Who?”

“I know I’ve seen her before but...I didn’t know she played Quidditch...it made her look--she was--I don’t even know if she saw me. I could swear she looked my way. Ponine, I’ve got to meet her!”

“So you haven’t yet.” Éponine pounced on the possible out. “You don’t actually know who she is.”

“I know,” Marius said, smiling that nice smile, not for her. His expression had gone faraway and dizzy again, and he looked right past her. Through her. She felt inexplicably cold. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for being late...again. My only excuse is that I spent most of yesterday binging on the Hamilton cast recording. In my defense, it is the Hamilton cast recording.
> 
> I hope it is not too painfully obvious that I was not a teenager who had any experience going to parties. Or drinking in high school. I am operating entirely on secondhand accounts here. And none of those secondhand accounts involved the warding away of the preteens from the booze but I figured none of the prefects would want to get caught feeding illicit alcohol to the wee baby eleven-year-olds??? That seems like a thing one would get in heaps of trouble for. Granted, I have no idea how Hogwarts would handle students distributing alcohol on campus because no such parties ever happen in the books, but I refuse to believe no one ever snuck booze into Hogwarts--not when a mildly-alcoholic drink is freely sold to 13-year-olds in the nearest town and especially not with the Weasley twins or the Marauders on the loose. (This AU doesn't have them, but it does have Grantaire.)


	6. Chapter 6 (Éponine)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Éponine has legwork to do and feelings to quash, and Marius has a girl to pine for.

Éponine had been swept into the victory party in the Gryffindor common room, in spite of more than one suspicious glance she’d gotten as a Slytherin, but she hadn’t been able to appreciate the gesture. Or the high-ceilinged, tall-windowed common room, though she’d automatically filed away its location and current password. She’d been too distracted by Marius, who’d spent the party trying to simultaneously find his girl and not look at her--surprisingly (accidentally) successful in not letting Éponine narrow down which of the Gryffindor Quidditch girls it was due to the crush of people. The violent blushing and moony expression and hopeful double-takes would have been hilarious if it all hadn’t made her want to scream.

She’d left early.

The result was that she’d gotten to bed early, slept badly, and never found out who it was that had Marius swooning, and that she ignored Courfeyrac waving at her from the Hufflepuff table at breakfast. Marius didn’t wave. He was scanning the Gryffindor table on the opposite side of the hall.

 ---

It went on like that the whole week.

Marius wasn’t ignoring her--he still sat by her in Arithmancy and at meetings on Tuesday and Thursday evening, and greeted her when she joined them for dinner--and it wasn’t as though he weren’t distracted from everything else, too. He sometimes forgot to eat at mealtimes, fork hovering in midair as his eyes went unfocused. She caught him doodling instead of taking Arithmancy notes, and there were hearts involved. He was being inattentive when Courfeyrac, Enjolras, or Combeferre spoke--a sign of the apocalypse if she ever saw one.

But it still hurt.

It both helped and didn’t that he asked her for a library study session on their free Friday afternoon, since, not having taken notes, he was utterly lost on the Arithmancy homework. It helped in the sense that six days without being graced by Marius’ attention was already feeling like too long. It didn’t help in the sense that most of the session would, she was sure, be devoted his new crush. She wasn’t wrong.

“I’ve never felt like this before,” he whispered in the musty library silence, turning the same page in his textbook that he’d been flipping over and back for the last quarter of an hour. “And I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t even know her name.”

“You know she’s on the Gryffindor Quidditch team,” Éponine prompted. She didn’t know what possessed her to say that--to be helpful. But then, she didn’t know why she’d agreed to spend time alone with Marius discussing this subject in the first place. It wasn’t like she hadn’t known where it was going. And she wasn’t in the habit of fooling herself; the student body was of limited size and he knew exactly which face he was looking for, she couldn’t possibly keep Marius away from his girl--whoever she was--just by being unhelpful. It would only prolong his moping.

And--she viciously squashed the part of her that thought it--it had been days since she’d seen his smile.

“That’s _all_ I know,” he corroborated, mournful. But he brightened after a moment. She could practically see the _Lumos_ light up over his head. “Ponine! You have classes with the Gryffindors!”

“You have friends,” she said slowly, “ _on_ the Gryffindor team.”

He gaped at her in horror. “I can’t tell my friends about her!”

Éponine knew he didn’t mean it as an insult, but was still stung. “Why the hell not?”

Marius fidgeted. “Courfeyrac figured out I was...I had feelings for someone, without my telling him…”

“Congratulations, Courf,” she said blandly, “you have eyes.”

“...and he and Bossuet...gave me, um, The Talk.”

Éponine blinked.

Marius buried his head in his hands.

“And then yesterday I walked in on Courf and Bahorel and R debating who it could be. There were professors on their list! R threatened me if I tried to take Flor--I mean, Professor Muguet away from him.” She snorted. He didn’t lose momentum. “They were _plotting_! How to find her and--and tell her about me and--I think the word ‘serenade’ was definitely involved--what if I tell them and they do something ridiculous? They’d think it was fun, but what if they…” He searched for the phrase. “Freaked her out?”

“So instead,” Éponine clarified, “you want me to stalk her for you.”

Wonderful.

**\---**

The plan was not, as Marius insisted, to stalk the object of his affections. The plan was for him to point her out to Éponine and see if she recognized her. If she did not, the next step of the plan was for Éponine to make contact with every girl listed on the Gryffindor team roster and match the name to the girl. Not stalking at all, of course. After that, the next step of the plan was...nebulous. It would hopefully (for him) involve getting the girl to speak to Marius.

“Why couldn’t you just talk to her? You’d be surprised how many things talking to people can solve.” He’d stared at her when she suggested it, and the sheer panic in his eyes convinced her to drop the subject.

(She supposed it would have been too much to expect of him. He wouldn’t talk to his friends about the girl, he was asking the person who already wanted him for help; of course he couldn’t face the Most Beautiful Girl He’d Ever Seen before knowing everything that might help him not screw it up. Éponine supposed having his worldview and his life turned upside down and inside out in the recent past had put him off decisive action. Then Éponine felt disgusted with herself for making excuses for him.)

Step one was put into action at dinner that night, when they lingered by the door of the Great Hall while Marius located the girl of his dreams. It hardly took a minute; Éponine followed his gaze when he nodded toward the Gryffindor table. “Which one?” she asked out of the corner of her mouth.

“The one with the dark hair. And the eyes…”

Éponine gritted her teeth. “Okay, describe the person she’s sitting next to.”

“Um, she’s not, really? She’s kind of by herself. She usually is. There, she just turned around to say hello to that blonde girl--”

Éponine had caught the movement, and felt her stomach sinking before the girl had turned fully back to face them. “Oh.”

“Well?” Marius’ anxious eyes darted between the Gryffindor table and Éponine. She didn’t meet them.

Marius looked crestfallen at her noncommittal shrug, but it only meant that they needed to move on to step two, so his gait wasn’t too dejected as he slumped toward the Hufflepuff table. Éponine, meanwhile, walked as though in her sleep. She hardly registered Courfeyrac’s greeting as they sat down, hardly noticed her own hands spooning food onto her plate, hardly tasted her dinner as she ate it. Her back was to the Gryffindor table, but Marius’ girl was before her eyes clear as day.

Only Marius would believe that Éponine didn’t know her. Only the foreign student, newly arrived that year, wouldn’t have recognized her himself. The rest of the student population, even the Muggleborns just by osmosis, knew who Cosette Fauchelevent was. The ex-con’s daughter. The old groundskeeper Fauchelevent’s niece. Except not really, because old Fauchelevent wasn’t really her father’s brother, and her father--who might also not be her real father--had gone to trial for pretending otherwise. The charges had been dropped with some maneuvering by Myriel, because apparently he was involved somehow too. Just one more reason you couldn’t attend Hogwarts within seven years of her and not know about Cosette.

As if that weren’t enough, you couldn’t be Éponine and not know more about Cosette than you wanted to; not remember the skinny, timid orphan in pretty, mysterious Miss Fauchelevent’s past and see how far your family had fallen, how completely some tables had turned.

The idea of talking to Cosette stuck in Éponine’s throat. The idea of helping her get Marius settled in her gut like the world’s heaviest stone.

**\---**

Step two involved Éponine spending most of that weekend trying to make herself speak to Cosette. She had promised Marius, after all. But there were reasons, good reasons, that she _hadn’t_ spoken to Cosette before in the four years they’d been at school together. Azelma had been doing her one better the whole time--being in Cosette’s year, she shared classes with her, and had still managed to avoid any and all contact. Cosette was one of those things they didn’t talk about to anyone, including each other. It was a steadily growing category. Also included in that category was the fact that their parents had spent Éponine’s first year trying to testify against Jean Valjean for stealing a child, without incriminating themselves. Azelma hadn’t warned her, and Gavroche hadn’t known she might need warning, and she’d come home to their parents’ displeasure when they’d failed. That alone encompassed so many reasons not to talk to Cosette.

Another reason was that Éponine had no idea whether Cosette remembered her; she’d made no attempt to find out.

She could never have forgotten Cosette, quiet and private though the girl was. (People who put stock in stereotypes could never understand why sweet and kindly Cosette was in the House of the bold. Éponine only needed to contrast that Cosette to the wide-eyed, shivering one in her memory and think that those people had no idea what they were talking about.) Aside from her status as a minor celebrity (or perhaps “curiosity” was more apt) by association, Cosette had made a place for herself at the school as one of those teachers’ pets who were too nice to hate--the kind of person everyone pegged as a prefect years in advance--and as the most talented Seeker in recent Hogwarts history. Plus, she’d always been visibly rich. To Éponine, who hadn’t been anything approaching that in a while, it showed clearly in the well-cared-for look of everything about her, from her robes to her fancy broom to her brand new books to her self. She’d always been well-known and -liked. She’d always been “cute”--something Éponine knew Azelma envied as much as the money and comfort, which was all kinds of irrational. Now, in Éponine’s fifth year, she was apparently the most beautiful girl Marius had ever seen. It just figured.

By the time the weekend was over, Éponine was avoiding Cosette and Marius both. There were too many reasons she couldn’t do this.

By Tuesday, it had been over a week since she’d seen Marius happy and four days that she’d been prolonging his unhappiness with her stalling. She couldn’t keep doing this either.

Once the latest meeting, most of which she’d ignored in favor of repeatedly ordering herself to take action, dissolved into conversation, Éponine left Marius’ side to delegate step three. He didn’t notice her go. She tried to console herself with the fact that he didn’t notice Courfeyrac and Bahorel making an escalating series of ridiculous faces at him either.

She sat herself down next to Prouvaire, who, one hand tangled in his pastel green scarf and the other busily scribbling on a scrap of parchment, took a moment to notice her. He started a little when he did. Éponine schooled her expression--she couldn’t look like she didn’t want to be doing this. (Or make Prouvaire think she was mad at him. No one would ever forgive her.) “You were on your own. Figured I’d join you.”

It was a bullshit excuse, since anyone who knew Jehan Prouvaire was familiar with his ability to spend hours on his own, gazing into the ether, without getting bored or forlorn. Being Jehan Prouvaire, though, he didn’t call her on it but responded with sympathy. “You’re on your own today too?”

She ignored the corner where Marius sat with unfocused eyes, Courfeyrac and Bahorel now debating tickling him to get his attention. “As ever. Gatecrashing your little boys’ club and all. You know, there are times I almost feel outnumbered.”

It wasn’t an illegitimate point. She did wish the circumstances of bringing it up were different, though.

Prouvaire looked around as well. She could always count on these boys to take a potential issue seriously. “Mmm. We _would_ do well to improve our gender diversity some.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Recruitment’s always been a problem,” he went on, getting pink the way he did when he got started on a subject he cared about, “I’ve talked to everyone I know about the group, of course, but I hadn’t thought of it that...I really should have. I suppose we come on strong, but there’s no point to what we do if we’re lukewarm...”

“Why not try the personal approach? I mostly remembered you guys for the bowtruckle infestation before Marius cajoled me into meeting his friends.” Prouvaire didn’t need to know how little cajoling had been needed. “How many of your friends could you talk to about this stuff?”

“Most of them are in this room.” Prouvaire smiled softly down at his ruffled quill in his ink-stained hands. “I mean, not that I have many close friends of any gender, there’s this and there’s the Quidditch team. I suppose a lot of them think of this as just another Thing Bahorel and I do as a unit, though, not that we don’t talk about important things with them but they don’t like it if we use team practice to preach...but if I talked to them personally...as a friend…”

“That’s five possibles right there,” Éponine prompted. “Four of whom are girls.”

“One of whom is our captain. She won’t commit to another extracurricular, I’m fairly certain she doesn’t sleep around planning our practices.” The quill twirled between his fingers. “Connors might be interested? Oh, Fauchelevent could be! If I could get them here.”

Éponine carefully did not react at all to the name. “Sounds like a place to start.”

Prouvaire’s smile at that was almost dazzling enough to make her forget her reasons not to want this. His reasons to be happy were much more admirable and less petty, after all. “Yes it does. May I braid your hair?” Éponine blinked at the change of subject, but his smile remained radiant and unwavering as ever. A happy Prouvaire needed something to do with his hands even more than a normal Prouvaire, apparently. “You have beautiful hair.”

She had hair that was too thick and probably had too many split ends, and which she kept pulled sharply back so that she didn’t have to do much to it to look presentable. But it made Prouvaire happy to see things as beautiful, and (over in his corner Marius was still on another planet) it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to be. So she sat there for the rest of the hour, watching Courfeyrac and Bahorel fail to bring Marius back to earth via interpretive dance, letting Prouvaire run his fingers through her hair.

**\---**

Step three happened much faster than it was supposed to. Éponine, half a second after thinking that, didn’t know why she’d thought it; it wasn’t like she’d expected Prouvaire to slack on something he’d gotten passionate about.

Maybe she’d been hoping his shyness would defer things, just for a little. A stupid hope.

It was only two days later, at the very next meeting, that Éponine tried to walk in behind Marius and ran right into his back. “Marius?” Courfeyrac asked from behind her. He was tall enough to see over Marius’ shoulder, and let out a strangled sound of glee that made Éponine’s stomach drop. “Is that--”

“It’s you.” There was only one person that voice could belong to. It sounded nothing like Éponine remembered, clear and sweet and not timid in the slightest, though perhaps a bit...breathless. A bit, Éponine thought, like Marius sounded trying to describe his Beautiful Girl.

Of course he wouldn’t even need to say anything. Of course it’d already be perfect.

“I saw you,” the voice continued, “I saw you but I didn’t know who you were…”

“Me too,” Marius blurted out, instead of saying something sensible, like his name. Courfeyrac buried his head in his hands. Éponine was tempted to do the same, for slightly different reasons. “I mean, I can’t believe you’re here, I mean--it’s you.”

Cosette laughed, and Éponine could see Marius’ ears go red from behind.

She turned away. She didn’t look at Courfeyrac as she slipped past him. She didn’t need to stay any longer to know her job was done.

(She didn’t need to see Cosette. She didn’t need Marius to try to thank her. She needed neither of those things to ever happen. Ever.)

She didn’t look back, but she could still hear Cosette speaking, so she knew Marius didn’t notice her go.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I say the Thenardiers are nothing approaching rich, I mean that they are basically the Gaunts in Half-Blood Prince. Though they have a much less impressive lineage. Not that they're above flaunting a fabricated background for all they're worth, of course.


	7. Chapter 7 (Cosette)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cosette is distracted, but is rather happy about it; meanwhile Joly is smitten, Bossuet is helpful, and Grantaire is Not Happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Cosette facecast! ](http://www.mediafire.com/view/pxy2fujyv8ccpcy/les_amies_-_Copy_%284%29.png)

Unequal treatment under wizarding law and social norms was no small problem. If anyone had reason to understand that, it was Cosette. And her father hadn’t even experienced the worst of it, as she was coming to realize thanks to Prouvaire’s group of friends; he was human, and a fully qualified wizard. If people found him easy to blame for something he didn’t do, how much worse did those without such advantages have it? It was important to Cosette, this realization. It truly was.

But she didn’t think anyone could blame her for being distracted.

How could she not be? It was _Marius_.

It was so nice to be able to put a name to him at last. She’d only ever caught glimpses of him before, but ever since the first Quidditch match she’d been actively looking for him again--a task made harder by the fact that she had no idea who he was. He definitely wasn’t in her year. She’d supposed he might be the transfer student, which made her heart ache for him a little (because who would transfer overseas during OWL year though unable to even afford new robes or an intact schoolbag, without something serious driving them away?). But that hadn’t helped her much. She hadn’t known he was a member of Prouvaire and Bahorel’s society. She almost shook Prouvaire at the first meeting for bringing her there and not _telling her_. Though, she supposed he couldn’t have known, since she hadn’t said anything about it to anyone. And she wasn’t really thinking about Prouvaire for most of that meeting. Because, well, Marius.

He took almost ten minutes of conversation to remember to exchange names, and he blushed adorably…

She was still interested in the society, though, she was. That first meeting had gotten a bit derailed (she did feel a bit guilty about it, she wasn’t sure Enjolras had forgiven Marius yet), but she’d accepted Prouvaire’s invitation because she wanted to learn more, so she of course came back to learn more. They’d begun planning their annual effort (though, she distinctly remembered Enjolras arriving only one year ago; could a second effort make something annual?) to personally survey all possible populations of magical creatures on Hogwarts’ campus. The very idea of it excited her. Imagine talking to a centaur! She wished she could do some of it herself; she’d never so much as managed to catch a glimpse of a Hogwarts house-elf.

“They’ll take that as a compliment,” Grantaire assured her. “They’re kind of annoyed that we know where to find them.”

“I think that’s just you,” Courfeyrac said to his Housemate over Cosette’s head. “Since you never go in there for anything but extra dessert.”

Grantaire shrugged, not denying it. “I’m not the one they’re still terrified of.”

“If you insist on harping on that--” Enjolras began, not looking up from the parchment on which he, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre were recording the division of duties.

“I’ll go this year,” Courfeyrac said loudly. “The house elves like me. They think I’m charming.” He winked at Cosette. “You can come with, if you like.”

She would very much like to. The only house elf she’d ever met was Toussaint, whose perspective, given that Cosette’s father had rescued her from unemployment, might not be unbiased. Besides, it would be good to thank the creatures who kept her well-fed and her room cleaned and her clothes laundered. She smiled back at Courfeyrac and accepted the invitation.

This caused Marius to pout, which was rather cute. And that in turn led to blushing when Courfeyrac laughed at him for possessiveness. Had she mentioned that Marius blushed adorably?

He didn’t have anything to worry about, in any case. He had no competition, charming or otherwise.

\---

She began to eat dinner with Marius and his friends, wherever they might be sitting on a given day. He always lit up when he saw her, always made space for her to sit beside him, always asked shyly how her day had been. She would tell him, and he would listen, and they could get halfway through dinner before remembering to speak to anyone else. Cosette was a little embarrassed by that, but it was so easy to get caught up in talking with Marius. No one else listened to her like that, like they wanted to keep doing it forever.

And he didn’t know anything about her. That was perhaps the best thing. He didn’t know anything about her or where she came from or her father, he didn’t even know to ask about it, yet he still thought her the most interesting person in the world.

She didn’t know if he understood how much that meant to her, but she thought he might. She knew he carried a worn envelope around with him everywhere he went, and an old watch, inherited though he was not yet seventeen. She knew he still thought aloud in French sometimes. She knew that at other times, he was inexplicably melancholy, and Courfeyrac’s incessant cheer could not alleviate it. Cosette returned the favor Marius did her and didn’t ask about any of these things. She asked about his progress in Ancient Runes, which he was always happy to discuss. She asked him about the merpeople in the lake, whom he’d been designated to speak to since he knew Mermish. (Adorable and smart.) She asked, teasingly, about the giant squid too, which made him look a little queasy. And every so often, he would look at her like he wanted to tell her something else, something important--she knew the look, she was familiar with the feeling. But he didn’t press, and neither did she. When he wanted to tell her, he would. Marius wasn’t some exotic mystery for her to solve. Marius was Marius.

\---

Cosette had known the boys (besides Prouvaire and Bahorel) for less than two weeks before the next Quidditch match, but it felt the most natural thing in the world that she sit with them. They certainly seemed to take it as a matter of course.

(Except Marius, she thought fondly. He held her hand all the way out to the pitch and up into the stands like he couldn’t quite believe she was beside him.)

She was a bit preoccupied with the feel of his hand in hers, but even she noticed Joly stopping dead in the middle of the stands. It was difficult not to, as Bossuet nearly fell over him.

“Hello,” said the person who’d caught Joly’s eye--a girl with waves of brown hair, wearing the blue-striped scarf of a Ravenclaw and the silver badge of a prefect. Joly squeaked in response.

“Hi,” Bahorel said loudly, with an unsubtle elbow to Joly’s ribs. “Nice to meet you. Are you turning on your House this early in the season? Also, who are you?”

“I’m Musichetta,” the girl replied, popping the _c_ and the  _t_ a little. “And I’m obviously not here to _root_ for Hufflepuff. I’ve been summoned for solidarity.”

Everyone looked at each other for a moment, then at Combeferre. “Jehan passed on an astute comment on our rather unbalanced gender dynamic,” he said, adjusting his own blue-striped scarf. “And being the only one here rooting for my House was getting a little tiring.”

Enjolras looked betrayed. “Why would you subscribe to so counter-productive a level of inter-House competitiveness as--”

“Gender dynamics,” Feuilly interrupted, and tugged a hopefully-mollified Enjolras down into his seat.

Combeferre followed suit, exchanging an amused glance with his fellow prefect. “Yes, I thought it was a good point, and when I told Nerocchi about it, she agreed.”

“I’m agreeing even more now.” Musichetta looked around, hands on hips, but still grinning. “Ten to one, _Dio bonino_. How do you deal with all this?” She directed this last at Cosette, sitting down beside her. Her sweeping gesture encompassed the entire group aside from themselves, her tone indicating exaggerated exasperation at a bunch of badly behaved pets. And she’d only been here five minutes. Oh, she would fit in well. Cosette laughed, and leaned into Marius.

“There are perks,” she said.

The other girl’s eyebrows went up, and her smile widened. She turned to pat the seat on her other side in invitation to Joly, who was still glued to the spot. And still staring at Musichetta. “I can believe that.”

Marius put a tentative arm around Cosette’s shoulders, and when she looked back at him he was beaming. “Perks?”

She settled into his half-embrace. “Well, I was thinking of one in particular.”

“Where _is_ Thenardier?” she heard Prouvaire say softly, just behind her, in Combeferre’s ear. “It was her comment, after all.”

Cosette froze.

“Yeah, she hasn’t been around,” Courfeyrac piped up, the frown audible in his voice. He leaned forward over Marius’ head. “Hey Pontmercy, you know where Ponine’s been?”

“No.” Marius frowned too, as if in sudden realization. “I haven’t seen her lately. I hope she’s well.”

There was a weighty pause from Courfeyrac behind them. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

He sat back with the air of determinedly closing the subject, and Cosette thought she distantly heard Prouvaire make a questioning noise that went unanswered. She wasn’t really listening at this point, though.

Cosette’s last recollection of Éponine was from half a lifetime ago. What memories she did have of the Thenardier family--she’d barely been old enough form detailed ones when her father came to take her away--were not good. But the memories of the daughters, one a bit older than herself and one a bit younger, were limited to their nicknames. It wasn’t like she hadn’t known the girls were nearby at Hogwarts; the younger one shared classes with her. She’d never known what she’d do if she actually met one of them again. She was determined not to hold anything against them (they’d all been infants, after all), but Azelma hadn’t approached her. She’d avoided her, in fact. And Cosette had never had occasion to so much as pass Éponine in the hallway. Now it turned out she was Marius’ friend, a member of this little society...and still Cosette had not seen her. It looked like the elder Thenardier might be avoiding her too.

She got the feeling Courfeyrac had figured out why, but also that he wouldn’t tell.

Marius didn’t seem to notice her lack of focus, for which she was grateful. She didn’t want to talk about these things when she was caught off-guard, or in front of an audience.

She wasn’t the only one distracted, either, she noticed with some relief. Musichetta spent the entire match talking to Joly, who was paying no attention to the game. At the far end of their row, Grantaire also appeared to have difficulty concentrating on Quidditch. He kept leaning out to shoot looks at Joly across Bossuet, until Bossuet, facing resolutely forward, kicked him. The three were well-nigh inseparable, Cosette supposed, and Grantaire had trouble with the notion of boundaries; it was understandable behavior from him.

She relaxed into Marius’ side again just in time for Musichetta to jump out of her seat (which nearly tipped Marius out of his in surprise) and the commentator to announce, a few seconds later, “HUFFLEPUFF WINS!”

“Ah, _cazzo_ ,” Musichetta huffed, flopping back into her seat. “She was so close!”

“You see why I requested moral support.” Combeferre’s voice was muffled from Courfeyrac squishing him into a three-person hug with Prouvaire. “We’re surrounded and outnumbered.” Musichetta patted his foot in sympathy.

“I abandoned the Ravenclaw stands for this,” she said, turning back to Joly. “You’ll just have to get me a consolation prize.”

Joly turned a shade of red that would have alarmed him severely had there been a mirror handy. “A, um--a, yes, a, hm, like--”

“Like an invite to the victory party,” Bossuet interjected. He was still looking resolutely forward, even as he leaned sideways to impart his tip.

“Yes, that!” Cosette could see Joly beam from her vantage point behind Musichetta. “Courfeyrac insists we throw the best ones.” He looked to Bossuet for confirmation. His friend finally turned his head, and patted Joly on the shoulder, and smiled. Cosette distinctly saw him mouth the words _Go get her_ , which made Musichetta laugh.

Grantaire was leaning out again, discretion thrown to the wind, gaze now darting from Joly to Bossuet. At Bossuet’s words, his face took on an expression of concern that could perhaps best be translated as _what the fuck_.

Cosette averted her eyes, wondering how this Quidditch match had gotten so unexpectedly complicated, to find Marius giving her a concerned look of his own.

She couldn’t have expected him to never notice.

\---

Marius walked her back to Gryffindor Tower after the party. Well, the party wasn’t over yet, but she suspected that Courfeyrac would keep it going until dawn--alone, if necessary.

They were quiet nearly all the way up. Marius’ hand brushed hers a few times, but he never took it. It was a good kind of quiet, a comfortable worn-out kind, but Cosette was also thinking about what on earth to say. She should explain her mood earlier. But that meant explaining about Éponine, and Marius knew Éponine, so it wasn’t entirely Cosette’s story to tell him.

They got up to the fourth floor before Marius said anything. Judging by the characteristic blush that came with it, it seemed that he’d been turning over what to say for about as long as she had. “Did you...have a good time?”

“I did,” she assured him. Oh, what if he thought her mood was his fault? “I just...I’ve had some things on my mind.”

He wanted to ask what things she meant, she could see it. He also was afraid it was the wrong thing to ask. She could see that too.

She was a bit nervous, watching him, wondering if he would make up his mind to ask or not, but he didn’t get the chance. A voice from down the hall boomed “You there! What are you doing out of your dormitories?” and Marius jumped as though bitten. At the sight of a broad, stocky figure striding towards them, he stepped in front of Cosette. She almost laughed at the very thought.

“Well?” demanded the figure, catching up to them. “It is past curfew for all students.”

“I’m sorry sir,” Marius said, earnest as ever, “We were just at a party--”

“A party?” The grizzled man frowned. “Where?”

Cosette decided to step in before Marius got their friends in trouble. “Hufflepuff was just celebrating winning today’s match,” she said, stepping around Marius. “Good evening, Mr. Javert.”

She caught Marius’ wide-eyed stare--acquaintance with the castle caretaker, one more thing she was going to have to explain--and Javert’s surprised twitch. He nodded to her, a little stiff, as always. “Miss Fauchelevent.”

“I’m sorry to be out so late,” she said, putting on her most charming smile. Javert always seemed to be in the kind of mood that could use a few more smiles sent his way. “We didn’t mean to, only we got to talking at the party and lost track of time. Marius insisted on walking me back to Gryffindor, so he’d know I’d made it there.”

“Mm.” Javert eyed Marius. Marius twitched.

It always amused and bemused Cosette that Javert had this effect on people. He was much more reasonable now, really, if one only respected him.

“You have behaved respectfully,” Javert asked abruptly, and when had he begun to talk like Father? “and intend to return directly to your dormitory?”

“Yes, sir.” Marius stood as straight as humanly possible, which looked the tiniest bit silly.

Javert _mm_ ed again. “I will know if you don’t.”

Marius stared after the caretaker as he stalked away.

Cosette waited until Javert had turned the corner to ask Marius, “Did he _frighten_ you?”

He shifted, sheepish. “Courfeyrac’s mentioned him…”

Cosette imagined Javert trying to discipline Courfeyrac. “That does explain it.”

“But, well, he does seem rather strict?”

“He used to be an Auror.” Cosette kept her voice light. “I expect having nothing but willful children to deal with is still a bit odd for him.”

“Do you...know him?”

And there it was. “He handled my father’s case. Spent years trying to find him and put him back in prison.”

A moment of silence. Then: “Your father was in _prison_?”

Cosette burst out laughing. She knew Marius was shocked and probably didn’t know what to think right now and she shouldn’t find this hilarious, but she couldn’t help it. He never had even the slightest inkling. His confused blush was even cuter than his usual one. She might adore him a little.

(And it occurred to her to be pleased that his friends--their friends--had never felt the need to give him the old gossip on her.)

“Years and years ago,” she told Marius, once she could speak without gasping. He propped her up when she leaned into him, solicitous even in his confusion. “For something he didn’t do. Mr. Javert wasn’t convinced he was innocent and kept looking for him after he escaped, but he’d never had a proper trial. As Headmaster Myriel pointed out when father turned himself in." It had been the year before she started Hogwarts. She remembered it feeling like a very long year.

"Your father...knows the Headmaster too?"

"He's been a friend to Father since he broke out of prison," she said, and had to suppress another giggle at the funny thing Marius' face did at the word "prison." "He supported Father when he turned himself in. They had to acquit him eventually, of course, and apologize. Mr. Javert was very sorry to have been wrong.” She looked back the way they’d come--Javert was not in sight--and checked the surrounding hallway--no paintings were obviously eavesdropping. “That’s how he got his job here--Father asked Myriel to help him, I mean, after he resigned from being an Auror. It took a lot of convincing, I think.” Judging by the Headmaster’s account to Father, taking _any_ job had taken a lot of convincing. “But he’s here now. Things have worked out.”

And would perhaps work out between Cosette and Éponine Thenardier, too, now that they shared a circle of friends.

“I’m glad,” Marius replied, with a look on his face that said he hadn’t finished processing what he’d been told but meant what he was saying.

“So am I.” Cosette came to a halt in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, who, the moment she noticed them, began pretending very poorly not to notice them. “I’ve never told anyone all of that before." Certainly not the bits about Javert; and most people knew the rest already.

The Fat Lady visibly suppressed the urge to writhe with curiosity.

Explaining about Éponine could wait, Cosette decided.

Marius, touched by the privilege this conversation had been--and also possibly put off a bit by the Fat Lady’s interest--couldn’t seem to find anything to say. He took Cosette’s hands in his (finally) and blushed deeper than ever, and took multiple preparatory deep breaths, but reconsidered each time.

He looked her in the eye, and she said “Would you like to go out with me?”

Marius expelled the latest preparatory breath in a surprised huff. “With...when?”

Cosette hadn’t really thought that far ahead. “Well, it’s busy and nearly half-term, so not immediately.” It was endearing how crestfallen he looked at that. “After the holidays, maybe?”

“After...yes.” He nodded, thoughtfully at first, then with vigor. “I would--I would love to.”

She squeezed his hands, then, after a moment of hesitation, let go. “Me too.”

Through the closing portrait hole (the Fat Lady was practically cooing as she swung on her hinges), Marius looked vaguely bewildered at the turns this conversation had taken, but also giddy at the final result. Cosette couldn’t stop smiling at him even as the portrait closed and she could no longer see him--she felt much the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~ [ Musichetta facecast! ](http://www.mediafire.com/view/w6isxsgv1ega9q3/les_amies_-_Copy_%283%29.png) I have feelings about Musichetta's Italian-ness because of her name, and am probably too pleased with the surname I've given her. I cannot guarantee her Italian will always be correct, because I am not fluent, but I can pretty much promise she will be solidly Tuscan? Since that is the only dialect in which I know any colloquialisms whatsoever.)  
> ~ Cosette's facecast, Kristin Kreuk, is a Canadian-born half-Chinese, half-Dutch actress who looks perpetually teenaged. (Less so now at age 33 than she did on Smallville, but still at certain angles.) She also, in my opinion, looks perpetually gorgeous, so it's fitting all around. My headcanon is that Fantine was first-gen Chinese--so, probably not named Fantine, unless that was something Tholomyès called her b/c he didn't give a shit about pronouncing her actual name. Also a Muggle, so, extra easy for Tholomyès and the Thenardiers to take advantage of. The Thenardiers probably convinced her that a wizarding child HAD to be raised by wizards, but not for free of course.  
> ~ Also: I only just realized that the italics in the early chapters didn't transfer, so they have only just appeared in the first half of the fic...oops.
> 
> ~ Edit: it is that time of the school year again, when midterms blur into finals and there are papers due everywhere and now job applications on top of that (o.O), so I will probably wait to get started on the kids' spring semester until I make it to winter break. Wish me luck! With making it to break, I mean.


	8. Chapter 8 (Cosette)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cosette goes on a few dates, kisses and secrets are shared, and a reunion doesn't quite happen.

Snow, to Cosette, always made Hogwarts feel truly magical. There was nothing cleaner and more sparkling with potential than the grounds smoothed over with white, the castle gleaming, ice-tipped, in the sun, the Forbidden Forest waiting to unbend from beneath its snowy burden, the lake and the air both glinting with cold. Even when footsteps and snowmen and the occasional wand-blast had marred the snow around the castle, you could walk out along the edge of the forest and find where it was untouched; you could look back on the castle and grounds, glowing with the colors of the setting sun; you could listen to the silence. It was perfect. Especially when she came back to it each January, it truly felt like a fresh start. 

She’d thought it was appropriate for a first date. They wouldn’t be having a Hogsmeade weekend for several weeks, anyway, and she for one was not willing to wait that long. Marius had agreed eagerly with the sentiment. He’d begun shivering before the sun went down, though, and his teeth had started chattering while they watched it set; so she’d decided to cut their ramble short and led him back toward the castle. She paused periodically to blow warm breath on their linked, half-numb hands, and occasionally on Marius’ cold-reddened nose too, just to laugh at his expression. 

Like the snow and the sunset, the date was beautiful--quiet and humming with fresh potential and perfect in spite of the bone-deep cold. Cosette stopped just beyond the stretch of lawn before the castle steps, which was snowball-battle-scarred, to tell Marius so. “I had a really good time.”

Marius gave her his beautiful smile. “I did too. It was beautiful. You look--” He didn’t finish, and his face flushed even deeper red than it already had with cold. Cosette ducked her head at the implication anyway, smiling.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Thank  _ you _ ,” he replied, perfectly serious, and stood there, just looking. Cosette stood looking back. It was quiet, and his hands were warm, and he was very  _ close _ . She had the sudden feeling that something was about to happen, and then he was getting closer--but no, he wasn’t moving. That must be her. Something was definitely about to happen.

She didn’t expect that something to be an earsplitting cry of “INCOMING!” and a spray of snow in her face as something--someone?--swerved past them into a drift.

“What on earth,” Marius coughed past the snow he’d gotten in his mouth. He did look rather cute blinking through a coating of snow, but Cosette was distracted now.

She peered into the drift, narrowing her eyes at the groaning figures trying to disentangle themselves from what looked like a giant silver platter--the kind used for serving whole roasted pigs--nicked from the kitchens. “Courfeyrac?!”

“Fauchelevent!” He hopped to his feet. “Marius! It’s you!”

“Hi guys,” Grantaire said, heaving himself upright. “What’d you think?”

Cosette’s eyebrows nearly disappeared under the edge of her hat. “What did we  _ think _ ?”

“Yeah,” Bahorel said, from where he was still sprawled in the snow. “We started at the top of the grand staircase. I wasn’t sure we’d make it all the way across the entrance hall, but this worked out better than I thought.” He patted the now-dented platter. “We can work on the steering.”

All three boys gave her identical wide grins. They faded as she turned her back. “Um,” Courfeyrac began, apology in his voice; but he didn’t get any farther before her snowball burst in his face. He blinked. “Okay.” 

Marius was also blinking at her in shock, but she just gave him a sweet smile and another snowball. “Well?”

They fought valiantly, but they were outnumbered three to two, and the opposing team had Bahorel. (He had a tendency to lob whole armfuls of snow at once.) Slowly but surely, Marius and Cosette were pushed back toward the castle entrance. It was time to make a strategic retreat. Cosette seized her opportunity--shoving a fistful of snow down the back of Courfeyrac’s robes--and then Marius’ hand, dragging him up the castle steps and through the door. They burst into the entrance hall short of breath and gasping with laughter at Courfeyrac’s wailing promises of revenge. His aim was not quite true--the avenging snowball (followed closely by its thrower, and Grantaire and Bahorel) flew through the doors and nearly beaned Marius before Cosette could tackle him out of the way.

Marius raised his head from the floor. His face was very close to hers again. “Does this mean we win?”  

“What,” boomed a familiar voice from the back of the hall, “is the meaning of this?” 

Cosette turned to see Javert glaring at the smashed snowball at his feet. She felt Marius scramble to his feet behind her. Javert looked up and scanned for the perpetrator. His gaze passed over Marius--whose foot twitched by her elbow--and paused on her. “Miss Fauchelevent,” he said, gruff where he had been sharp a moment ago. Then he pinned the three boys in the doorway with his gaze, and the glare was back.

Bahorel tried to hide the much-abused kitchen platter behind him. Courfeyrac offered a winning smile. “Would you believe us if we said ‘innocent fun’?” Grantaire tried, with the resignation of one who knew the answer to his own question. Javert drew himself up, eyes steely, completely unmoved. 

It occurred to her for the first time that Javert was perhaps nicer to her than to others. 

\---

“Classes haven’t even started yet!” Courfeyrac moaned. “He can’t give detentions before classes have even  _ started _ !” 

“I’m pretty sure he can,” Grantaire called down the table past Joly. “Seeing as he, you know, did.” 

“Travesty,” Courfeyrac muttered mutinously. “Injustice.” 

“That sounds eerily like your exact reaction to the consequences of the Great Anti- Tickling Hex Crusade of second year,” Bossuet noted through a mouthful of mashed potatoes. 

Courfeyrac drew himself up. “Tickling Hexes are an egregious violation of agency  _ and  _ personal space.” Combeferre, over whose lap Courfeyrac’s leg was draped, coughed. “Making this known to the school by whatever means necessary was a duty, not a call for two months of detention.”

Marius blinked a little. “I...actually don’t know why I feel surprised.” Cosette snorted a laugh.

“Oh sure.” Courfeyrac waved his fork at her. “Laugh it up. Just because Javert has some weird guilt trip about your dad and he’s all soft on  _ you _ .”

“He’s not lenient with me.” Cosette took a dignified sip of her pumpkin juice. “For him to be lenient, I’d have to do something to cross him first. And all I did was run from a hostile attack.”

Courfeyrac narrowed his eyes at her across the table. “I don’t trust your innocent exterior, Fauchelevent. I don’t trust it at all.” 

“I have unimpeachable character witnesses.” She smiled at Marius. Under the table, their ankles brushed.

“Objection!” Bahorel’s head shot up. “Pontmercy is  _ so  _ impeached. He got off scot-free just by association. Provide alternatives.”

Cosette looked across the table at Prouvaire, who raised his hand. Bahorel groaned. “Come  _ on _ .”

“My uncle Fauchelevent?” she offered. “He can testify as far back as my formative years, and he’s readily available, the groundskeeper’s house is just across the lawn.”

“Uncle!” Courfeyrac stabbed a finger at her. “So  _ that’s  _ how you’re related to him.”

She shrugged. “Well, I’m not really related.”

“Right, you’re adopted?”

“That too. But he’s not related to Father anyway. He’s just an old friend.”

“Then...why do you have his name…?”

"Well we couldn't use 'Valjean' when Father was wanted by the law, now could we?" she said primly. "Father helped him get his job here with Myriel, he was happy to do us a favor in return. And I got used to it, I didn’t want to overhaul my identity all over again."

"So your father isn't really your father, your uncle isn't really your uncle, your not-really-father's bestie is our Headmaster, your not-really-uncle is our groundskeeper, your not-really-father got your not-really-uncle employed just by asking his bestie,  _ and _ he did the same favor for the guy who spent years hunting him down. Who also acts like he's your not-really-uncle."

Cosette took a second to make sure she had it all straight. "Yes."

Courfeyrac looked positively gleeful, all mock-resentment forgotten. "Marius, keep her at least until we graduate. Share your connections with me, milady. I beg you."

She leaned forward. "Well, I understand you have ties to the house elves. I'm sure we can come to an arrangement."

It was at that point that Grantaire started to laugh into Bossuet's shoulder, and kept laughing until he cried. "Pontmercy's  _ face _ ."

\---

Neither she nor the boys made a big a deal of Cosette talking about her family so casually. She was grateful. Talking about it at all was a mildly surreal experience. The last, and first, person she’d told anything about her past had been Marius...had it only been a month ago? But they made it easy to be around them, easy to tell or not tell them anything, as she wished. 

And Marius made her  _ want  _ to tell him everything.

She did, in pieces, here and there. She told him about her mother one night when they were curled up in front of the Gryffindor fireplace, about not remembering her face or voice, about Father knowing what happened to her but never speaking of it. She told him about the Thenardiers on another walk through the snow, with no one else around; about her father coming, as he’d promised her mother, to take her away from bad people. (She didn’t name them. She was still waiting, hoping, for Éponine.) 

In return he told her about his grandfather, his stuffy mansion near Paris, his isolation. He talked in a faraway voice about his father--about thinking for years he'd abandoned his wife and son; about his death. He talked about receiving a one-person Portkey for the purpose of picking up his inheritance, and arriving to nothing but his father’s best friend weeping and a will telling him how little George Pontmercy had to leave to him, how much better off he was with his grandfather--how much he was loved. He told her about the weekly letters that had been kept from him, that he'd never seen. He told her about refusing to return to his grandfather. He showed her the will that he carried with him everywhere. He tried to unfold it and let her read it, but his fingers turned white on the parchment, and she pushed it away and told him it was all right. 

They knew all each other’s closest secrets before she kissed him for the first time. It took all of two weeks. They were out in the snow again, in a quiet street on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Marius’ ears and nose were red, and his eyes were bright, and so serious. His lips were a little chapped after hours outdoors in the cold, and she was pretty sure hers were too. He still looked at her like that kiss was the best thing ever to happen to him.

Courfeyrac came across them a few seconds later, on his way out of town, and began wolf-whistling, so that date also ended in a snowball fight that ranged all the way back to the castle.

\---

“ _ Again _ ?” Bahorel asked before the next meeting.

“It was a clear victory for us this time, though,” Cosette said. “Two against one. Turnabout is fair play.”

Grantaire piped up from his corner table. “In that case, don’t you two still owe us a detention?”

Bossuet elbowed him in the ribs. “The Hogsmeade Date Experiment was a success, though,” he said. “Will we see a repeat?”

Everyone looked at Cosette and Marius. Marius looked at Cosette. “The next Hogsmeade weekend is on Valentine’s Day.” She took his hand, couldn’t help grinning at his look of shock. Of course he hadn’t known. “I’d say we have to.”

Marius’ face broke into a returning grin. Cosette had the strong urge to kiss him again.

The clatter of a chair falling over broke the moment, though. Everyone in the room turned at the sound to see Joly sprawled several feet away from his table at Musichetta’s feet and Bossuet wincing apologetically, even as he stared innocently in the opposite direction.

“Smooth,” Grantaire muttered.

“Um,” Joly said. It took him an uncharacteristically long time to get up off the surely unclean floor. Musichetta raised her eyebrows. “Sorry, I just--um. I was wondering if maybe you’d be interested in that too? Not with Marius and Cosette, I mean, just Valentine’s Day. With, um. Me.”

Musichetta cocked her head. “Valentine’s Day.  _ Beh _ , that sounds like the kind of thing that needs a trial run.” The corners of her lips twitched upward. “I don’t suppose you’d be opposed to one of those?”

“Um,” Joly repeated.

“He means yes please,” Bossuet supplied, still looking in the opposite direction. Musichetta’s eyes crinkled and her dimples deepened.

“Good,” she said.

The room was still in a state of raucous celebration when Enjolras walked in. He didn’t seem to register the reason, quizzical eyes sliding right over Marius and Cosette’s linked hands and Joly now sharing a chair with Musichetta (she didn’t move slowly). Cosette wasn’t sure whether Bahorel waltzing around the room with Prouvaire was distracting him, or if Enjolras was just being Enjolras.

“Oi, chief’s here,” Grantaire called out. “Put on your serious faces.”

Enjolras gave an impatient huff, already on his way to the front of the room. “We’re not starting without Courfeyrac.”

“Someone say my name?”

Next to Cosette, Marius choked. Bossuet shook his head at Courfeyrac posing in the doorway. “Speak of the devil.”

Courfeyrac just winked. “A handsome one.”

It was Marius who first saw the person behind Courfeyrac, hesitating in his shadow before entering the room. “Ponine?”

Prouvaire stopped in his tracks to turn and beam at the girl. Bahorel lumbered right past his dance partner and thudded to the floor. (“ _ Ow _ .”) Bossuet waved, and patted Joly’s vacated (and now upright again) chair. “Hey, Thenardier.”

“Ponine, it’s so good to see you again!” Cosette heard Marius as if from a distance as she kept her eyes trained on Éponine Thenardier.

Everything Cosette needed to know she gathered in one glance. Éponine’s eyes darted from Marius, to the people who greeted her, back to Marius, and then to Cosette. And then away again. She wouldn’t hold either Cosette or Marius’ gaze. Cosette’s heart sank as she understood that, firstly, Éponine definitely remembered her, secondly, that Éponine wouldn’t be talking to her, and thirdly, that she herself was only part of the reason the Thenardier girl had been staying away. Cosette’s eyes dropped to Marius’ hand in hers.

When Courfeyrac nudged her arm, Éponine nodded to her friends as they took their seats, and turned on her heel to take the chair Bossuet had offered her. It was at the far end of the room from Marius and Cosette.

With everyone present--even Enjolras seemed pleased to see Éponine back, however little she spoke--the meeting got underway. But Cosette couldn’t stop herself from losing focus, from glancing over periodically at the corner table where Éponine sat. It took her half an hour--because Éponine was clearly trying to avoid her gaze--to realize that nobody at that table was listening or talking to anyone, but were all three staring past each other at different people. Behavior she was used to from Grantaire, but which was new today for Bossuet. And for Éponine...

Cosette looked away before she could pinpoint who each of the three were staring at. She thought she could guess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~ Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it! (and happy midwinter and almost-New Year to those who, like me, do not.) I swear I didn't do this on purpose, my semester just ended three days ago so I could go back to editing this thing and getting it posted. But it is a snowy chapter, so it feels appropriate anyway. :) If you are still reading this, thank you for waiting <3  
> ~ If you are still reading this, I would also really appreciate your comments, b/c I am fairly new to this whole writing (fan)fiction thing, and do not have much else to turn to for feedback / criticism / suggestions on how to slip Hamilton references into a Hogwarts AU. ;)  
> ~ What Valjean Refuses to Speak About Re: Fantine--he was in disguise as a Muggle when he met her, since, y'know, recently escaped from Azkaban. He has never quite forgiven himself for not being able to save Fantine's life b/c he didn't have a wand at the time.   
> ~ Having to write an actual happy, flirty romantic couple has brought home to me that I have NO idea how to write happy flirtiness. What is romance. How do people do it.   
> ~ Credit to Roxie for the Great Anti- Tickling Hex Crusade of second year.


	9. Chapter 9 (Musichetta)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Musichetta deals with boys, Grantaire deals with frustration, and Bossuet deals with his latest misfortunes.

Joly had had nothing to worry about when he asked Musichetta out, which he really should have known. She’d only been flirting with him for their _entire acquaintance_. But Musichetta was not above a little harmless teasing, certainly not if it meant they could go on a date--sorry, “trial run”--sooner than Valentine’s Day.

Their trial run was another Quidditch match. Musichetta thought she could gladly make a habit of this, especially when she could co-opt Joly into rooting for her House. Most of the group was, this time, in solidarity with Combeferre; though Courfeyrac, plopping down next to Éponine and blocking her view of Cosette and Marius, declared himself a rebel and pledged his temporary loyalty to Éponine’s team.

“ _I_ don’t even have any loyalty to my team,” she told him, flat and brittle.

“Then I shall need to recruit!” Courfeyrac leaned over the row in front of him. “Hey, Eagle--what’ll it take to seduce you over to the opposing side?”

Bossuet threw a reluctant glance at Musichetta and Joly, the farther of whom was checking the color of his tongue and the secureness of his scarf rather than listening, and the nearer of whom raised two dangerous eyebrows in his direction. On his other side, though, Grantaire piped up with “Who needs seduction, let’s play traitor.” He elbowed Bossuet in the side (a little harder than necessary, Musichetta judged from the resultant wince--though knowing Bossuet, it had probably been an unintentional hit to a sensitive spot). “C’mon. Even things out a little, at least.”

Bossuet still looked hesitant, but Musichetta only laughed, which seemed to relax him. “Sure. We’ll join your ragtag underdog team, one of whom doesn’t even care if we win.” He tilted his head back to give Éponine an upside-down grin.

“ _Via_.” Musichetta waved a magnanimous hand. “You’ll need all the help you can get.”

Bossuet put a mock-offended hand to his heart, and Courfeyrac crowed “Challenge accepted!” and even Éponine snorted; but Grantaire responded only with a glare before settling back in his seat and looking away.

Musichetta knew for a fact that Grantaire didn’t give a damn about Quidditch. (It was difficult not to know how many things Grantaire didn’t give a damn about, since he rarely stopped announcing them.) She knew he wasn’t angry with her about inter-House antagonism. It was Grantaire, though. He was weird with her, even though his two best friends liked her well enough.

She turned back to a confused-looking Joly, and couldn’t help but smile as she adjusted his already much-fussed-over scarf. One of them obviously liked her _more_ than enough. Yes, she could gladly make a habit of these Quidditch dates, but she was definitely looking forward to more private ones, too.

“Just so you know, on our next date I am going to demand you dress so I can see you,” she told him, mock-irritated, and plucked at his scarf. It looked about five times the length of an average scarf, given how thickly it was wrapped about his neck and that the ends still hung down low enough for him to sit on. Combined with the mittens and the hat drawn down over his ears and almost to his eyebrows, it meant he was showing almost no skin.

“It’s nearly midterm,” he replied with dignity, “and it’s November in Scotland. I don’t need cold overworking my immune system as well as stress.”

“As long as you don’t suffocate in there,” she teased.

In typical Joly fashion, he took this possibility seriously. “Does that seem likely?” His woolly-hat-hidden eyebrows scrunched and he started fussing with his scarf again. “I was very careful getting ready but I wasn’t thinking about that, I would have noticed difficulty breathing by now wouldn’t I?”

Musichetta grabbed his hands. “I’m sure you would.” His hands twitched back toward his wrappings but she slapped them away. She adjusted his scarf herself, not loosening it much but taking a second to drape the loose ends more aesthetically. “You,” she pronounced, tapping him on the nose, “are fine.”

Joly caught her fingers as she pulled them away from his face, and looked immensely pleased with himself. When she turned back to the pitch, she saw Bossuet smiling at her. “Nice,” he murmured. She couldn’t tell if he was talking to her about the scarf intervention (she’d seen what happened when Joly was allowed to get worked up about his health once or twice), or to Joly about intercepting her hand (which he still looked tickled about). Possibly both. Bossuet was a good sort, luck aside.

The date went on in the same comfortable manner. Musichetta alternated between teasing Joly and shouting curses at Courfeyrac every time he cheered for Slytherin; Joly never let go of her hand. On her other side, Bossuet occasionally responded to the Italian swearing he didn’t understand with French and Romani, and they got into a brief shoulder-shoving contest that ended, predictably, with a misplaced elbow to Bossuet’s neck and a profuse apology. He just shrugged it off, laughing at Courfeyrac and Bahorel’s calls for the Slytherin team to avenge their wounded comrade. Joly laughed too, once he’d ascertained Bossuet wasn’t hurt.

Partway through the match, Joly picked up his cane and pushed himself to his feet, pleading a need for the toilet. He had to be reminded to let go of Musichetta’s hand. “Hurry back,” she joked. “Your friends are impossible without you.”

“We prefer ‘quirky and lovable,’” Joly grinned.

“Nah, that’s just you, Jolllly,” Bossuet corrected.

“Excuse me!” Joly crossed his arms. With the quadruple-wrapped scarf and mittened hands and cold-reddened nose, he couldn’t have looked less intimidating if he’d tried. “I surround myself with quirky and lovable people!”

Musichetta winked. “Aw, thanks babe.”

Joly was giggling as he left the stands.

Grantaire gagged. Bossuet made to elbow him in the side, but somehow banged his elbow against the seat instead. Wincing and rubbing the joint, he said, “R. Quit being a jerk.”

“It’s a permanent state of being.”

“He’s not wrong,” Courfeyrac noted.

“Don’t be a jerk to Musichetta, though, Joly likes her. Joly has impeccable taste in people.”

Grantaire squinted at his friend. “Joly likes  _me_.”

Bossuet looked genuinely offended--though Musichetta couldn’t tell whether it was at the dismissal of his best friend’s taste or at the self-denigration of his other best friend--but before he could launch a counterargument Enjolras cut in. “Is it because she’s Muggleborn?”

The words were sharp as razor blades. Grantaire hunched in on himself as if that would protect him from the cuts. Musichetta, more surprised than Grantaire appeared to be at the accusation, turned to look at Enjolras, who was tight-lipped. (On her behalf. She barely even knew him, _per amor di Dio_. But that was Enjolras for you.)

Bossuet twisted around in his seat too, expression as unhappy as she’d ever seen it--and she hadn’t known him long, but he _never_ looked unhappy. Bossuet looking upset made one want to yell at whatever was causing it. Or maybe that was just her personal propensity for yelling at things that pissed her off. “Dude,” he said. “Really?”

Enjolras didn’t falter. “What else sets her apart, to be targeted?”

“ _Madonna,_ I’m _right here_ ,” Musichetta cut in, before anyone else could reply. Because she was. And she trusted Joly (and Bossuet) not to be fast friends with a blood-purist asshole. And this was getting ridiculous.

Enjolras’ gaze did flicker then, moving to her instead. He nodded. “My apologies.”

She didn’t let him off the hook that easy, staring him down for the requisite twelve seconds (long enough for anyone but Enjolras to have gotten uncomfortable) before nodding back. He did not, she noticed, apologize to Grantaire.

\---

The thing was, she still couldn’t figure out the _real_ reason Grantaire didn’t like her.

She hadn’t done anything to him, or at least no one was telling her if she had. As far as she remembered every interaction they’d had had been friendly on her side. He frustrated her--he seemed like a smart guy, well-read even in Muggle lit and the most capable bullshitter she’d ever met, and however unimpressed he was with humanity in general he was devoted to his friends; all qualities she could admire. Hell, she was dying for a good conversation on Muggle lit, because no one else in the castle seemed to have _read_ any. But Grantaire couldn’t even have a civil conversation with her, and she couldn’t believe being a member of “humanity in general” rather than “already my friend” accounted for the extent of his grumpiness.

It occurred to her that it might be jealousy, but then she remembered that Enjolras existed. Whatever the hell was going on  _there_.

She didn’t talk to Joly about it. There was no reason to upset him and screw things up with his best friend. Bossuet, though, picked up on her frustration without her having to say anything and laughed it off. “Don’t worry about R. He sulked at me for weeks when I horned in on Joly’s supply of friendship. Took him a while to figure out it’s actually bottomless.” He gave her one of his wry, perpetually rueful grins, and an aborted wave in her general direction. “Joly dating is new, but he’ll get used to it.”

Bossuet did that a lot--offer a comforting word, a tentative smile, an almost-but-never-quite touch. He was careful with everybody, friends or otherwise, since he “couldn’t have his luck rubbing off of anyone”; always watching where he put his elbows, just in case, keeping his inkpots far from homework that wasn’t his own, to avoid collateral damage, not leaning on people, for fear of tipping over on top of them. But with her he was practically polite. Like contact wasn’t just potentially hazardous to someone’s health, but not allowed.

Joly was not a possessive guy, but it was cute of Bossuet anyway.

“Even if R doesn’t, I like you, anyway,” Bossuet added. And then he turned bright red. Musichetta laughed at him. “And so does Jolllly, obviously, which is the important bit, right?”

 _Very_ cute of him.

\---

Bossuet and Joly made a good matched set in that respect, because her boyfriend (she was told that her smile in reaction to that word was slightly intimidating) was both the sweetest and cutest person Musichetta had ever met. Maybe it was a Hufflepuff thing. Though...Grantaire.

Grantaire could work out his own issues. Musichetta was busy spending nearly all her free time with her boyfriend. 

The day after the Quidditch match they were studying for Charms together in the library, and he got them kicked out for chattering nonstop, hands flailing, about recent breakthroughs in scrofungulus cure research. “Sorry,” he told her in the hallway, sheepish, but with hands still twitching with excitement on his cane. She only tweaked his nose and told him to make it up to her, at which point he turned completely red and couldn’t stop grinning.  

That evening was a good one.

The next morning was a good one too, and a bit of a surprise. She saw Joly come into the Great Hall at breakfast flanked by his Housemates (well, by Bossuet and Grantaire; Courfeyrac wandered over to bug Enjolras and Marius made a beeline for Cosette) and threw him a wink from her seat at the Ravenclaw table. It had the intended effect of making him grin uncontrollably again. It also, though, had the unexpected effect of making Bossuet elbow Joly in the side until he veered off toward her. She waved in thanks, and ignored the look of frustration Grantaire shot Bossuet before slouching off to the Hufflepuff table. “ _Ciao, bello_ ,” she greeted her boyfriend (who didn’t seem to find her smile in reaction to just _thinking_ that word at all intimidating).

“Good morning,” he replied, sitting across from her and fussing with his collar. It wasn’t quite succeeding at hiding the evidence of last night’s makeout session. “Did you, ah, ever get that Charms homework done?” She snorted a laugh and tapped at his ankles with her toes under the table. He honest-to-god giggled.

Joly breakfasting at the Ravenclaw table became a matter of course from then on. Musichetta did not in the least care how sore Grantaire was about it.

\---

Bossuet nudged Joly over to sit with Musichetta at meetings, too, which she appreciated. Joly seemed confused, though, the first time it happened. He was happy to sit with her; he lit up and laced their fingers together and laughed when she pulled him into her lap. It was when he looked back and Bossuet had already sat down in the corner with Éponine and Grantaire that confusion set in.

She distracted him by running her fingers through his hair, which she’d discovered was a handy way to make him melt, and sent Bossuet a thankful wink. He ducked his head.

It happened again at the next meeting, and this time Joly was distracted the whole time, to the point that both he and Musichetta missed a lot of details about the centaur population in the Forbidden Forest. Bossuet seemed determined to give the two of them space even after the meeting dissolved into social hour, which was sweet but really unnecessary.

The third time in a row this happened, Joly was still bothered by it the next morning. “I don’t know if I did something?” he fretted over breakfast. “Does he not want to hang out with me?”

“I think he wants you to hang out with me,” Musichetta said. She laced their hands together across the table, since that was something he seemed to like and find calming, and he started fiddling absentmindedly with her fingers where they interwove with his. (She was starting to notice he had a thing for her hands.)

“I do hang out with you. I love hanging out with you.” Joly frowned. “I would hang out with you whether he stranded me with you or not.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly, but smiled. “You could try telling him that. And that you want to hang out with him. We could even get really wild and all hang out together sometime.”

He smiled, his usual sunniness back in full force at the idea, but his expression quickly dropped into a frown again. “Then R’d be on his own. It’s not good for him to be on his own.”

Musichetta could see Grantaire shooting the pair of them grumpy looks from the next table. She still didn’t know what was up with him, but Bossuet unsubtly pushing Joly at her certainly didn’t seem to have helped. Now he was acting irritated with both his best friends. She could only imagine what bad company he’d be if she monopolized them both.

But she found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she too missed Bossuet’s company. For a person who said he liked her, he sure was avoiding her a lot, and Musichetta was not a fan of mixed messages. Plus, Joly was still looking dejected, and she caught Bossuet turning around to throw them a wistful glance, and it was far more important to fix those things than to worry about Grantaire’s feelings.

She narrowed her eyes at Bossuet’s back, which was now turned to her. She’d corner him after the next meeting.

\---

Her plan was derailed before the meeting even began, because Bossuet didn’t succeed in steering Joly over to Musichetta and then retreating to the back corner. This may have had something to do with the fact that Joly was wringing his hands over him, lecturing intently about something that was, apparently, a “bad, bad, bad, bad, bad idea!”

“What’s up, _passerott_ _o_?” She took Joly’s hands to still the fluttering, with only partial success. She raised an eyebrow at Bossuet. “You haven’t gotten set on fire again, have you?”

“You weren’t even there for that!” he objected.

“It’s the kind of thing you hear about, Eagle,” Courfeyrac called from across the room. To Musichetta, he said “Bahorel just reminded us that the sixth years start Apparition lessons tomorrow.”

“It’s gonna be awesome,” Bahorel crowed. “I’ve been waiting ages to learn this shit. Swoop in outta nowhere and vanish without a trace!”

“I don’t think you’re capable of doing anything without a trace, dear,” Prouvaire told him.

Bahorel stuck his tongue out at his teammate. “I could learn.”

Everyone snorted, even Enjolras. Cosette laughed out loud.

“The process of learning Apparition isn’t an immediate one, anyway,” Combeferre reminded them, in his calming, rational way. “It’ll probably be a while before you can actually do anything.”

He directed his comment half at Bahorel and half at Bossuet, apparently hoping it would allay Joly’s worries. No such luck. “The process is _dangerous_ , is the point,” he insisted. “There’s a high risk of doing Apparition partway, if you’re not focused enough, and Splinching can be _awful_ \--”

“Hey!” Bossuet took mock offense. “Are you saying I can’t focus?”

Grantaire leaned back in his chair. “Nah, I think he’s saying you’ll be focusing just great, and then right when you’re about to take off or whatever a random speck of dust’ll choose that moment out of a million to make you sneeze and then _bam_.” He made an alarming gesture.

Joly nodded emphatically. “Exactly!”

“Helpful as ever, Grantaire,” Courfeyrac sighed.

“Well, if it’s going to happen to anyone…” Marius interjected, looking honestly concerned.

“I won’t be the first or the last,” Bossuet finished. “It’s not like the guys running this have no experience fixing Splinched people.” He sighed. “This is why I didn’t tell you guys I was doing it.”

Musichetta put a hand on his shoulder. “You can do whatever you want, _caro_ ,” she assured him, “as long as you come back to us in one piece.”

He grinned up at her. She was surprised by how happy she was to see him smile at her, after all the evasion. “Thank you, milady.”

\---

So the evening before Valentine’s Day went a bit differently than Musichetta might have expected.

They waited for Bossuet in the Hufflepuff common room. Bossuet had joked that they might as well wait up in the hospital wing if they were so worried, but Musichetta had flicked his nose in reprimand and Grantaire had asserted that he loved his friends, but not enough to hang out on hospital beds when he could be hanging out in his comfy armchair of choice. Bahorel had slapped Bossuet on the back and promised to return him undamaged. Joly had not looked reassured.

Grantaire was spending more time perched on the arm of Joly’s loveseat than in a comfy armchair. Musichetta tucked herself in next to her boyfriend, trying not to let his worry rub off on her. (She wasn't sure how to calm him down; she was used to his paranoia being directed at himself. This degree of fretting over someone else’s health was new.) Clumsy teens took Apparition lessons every year. Bossuet would be fine.  

“He’ll be fine,” Grantaire said aloud, radiating deliberate unconcern.

 _“He’s Bossuet!”_ Joly wailed. He did, Musichetta thought, have a point. She pushed the thought aside. _Stop worrying about your boyfriend’s best friend and worry about your boyfriend._

“Bossuet,” Grantaire shot back, “is _always fine_. No matter how much shit happens, he always comes back smiling. He’ll be back soon, he’ll be good as new, and he’ll probably have another hilarious story to tell.”

Joly wrapped his arms around his knees and nodded, repeatedly. Musichetta slipped her arm around his shoulders. “You know he’ll be more upset if he makes you worry than anything, _tesoro_.”

“I know,” he sighed, leaning into her shoulder.

It was a long hour.

It was longer than an hour, actually, because Bossuet was late getting back. When it started ticking toward the hour-and-a-half mark, Joly got agitated. “Something’s happened, I knew it I knew it I _knew_ it.”

“Jolllly.” Grantaire put a hand on his shoulder. Musichetta thought it might be the only thing keeping Joly from flying off the loveseat and bouncing off the walls. “You know him. He probably just walked into a suit of armor on his way back down here.”

“Bahorel would come tell us if we needed to know,” Musichetta tried.

“What if he’s Splinched himself too?”

“He'd be intolerably proud,” Grantaire said. “The whole castle would've heard by now.”

Musichetta glanced at the clock, then back at her boyfriend. She tamped down her own worry enough, hopefully, that it wasn’t audible in her voice. “Maybe I should go check out the hospital wing...”

“Should I be insulted or touched?”

She twisted around in her seat so fast she nearly fell out of it. Bossuet grinned at them from the entrance.

“ _Ciao, amore_.” Musichetta felt her face split into a grin that would hurt if she kept it up too long. She was having trouble stopping, though. “Look at you, all in one piece.”

“Are you?” Joly tried to clamber over the back of the loveseat, and Bossuet hurried over before he could go tumbling. “Why are you so late?” Joly started patting his friend down as soon as he was within arm’s reach. “What happened? Were you in the hospital wing?”

Bossuet laughed. “Relax, Jolllly. I have a clean bill of health from Simplice.”

“Why did you need to go see Simplice?” Joly demanded.

Musichetta cleared her throat. “ _Caro_ ,” she asked carefully. She wasn’t sure how she’d missed it before, but now that the relief of Bossuet being unSplinched was ebbing she was finding it impossible not to stare. “What happened to your hair?”

There was a moment of silence while everyone realized what was different about him.

Bossuet gave a sheepish shrug. “Well...apparently it’s possible to Splinch hair?”

Grantaire punched his friend in the arm. “Only you, Eagle, _seriously_.”

“Well, I didn’t Splinch _all_ of it, it was kind of a...patchy situation.” Bossuet waved a hand at his own, now shiny and bald, head. “They sent me up to Simplice ’cause it should’ve been a simple fix. You can buy stuff to grow your hair back in, right? She’s had to fix enough burned eyebrows in her time, she doesn’t even bat an eye at that kind of thing. Only I had a bad reaction to the potion.” He shrugged again. “Figures.”

“Bad reaction?” Joly sounded nervous again, and leaned up to take Bossuet’s pulse with one hand and poke at his scalp with the other. “What kind of reaction? Was it severe?”

“Does 'the patches fell out too' count as severe?”

“ _Oh, Dio._ ” Musichetta tried not to giggle, she really did. Bossuet just laughed with her, taking care not to jostle Joly’s ongoing inspection of his head too much.

Joly took the question seriously, of  course. “I’m not sure,” he frowned. “It might have an effect on your hair growing back in naturally.”

“Possibly permanently bald at seventeen,” Bossuet sighed, a melodramatic hand over his heart. “Just my luck.”

Musichetta pulled herself up onto the back of the loveseat so she could reach his head. She buffed it with her sleeve. “ _Beh_ , I kind of like the new look.”

That was when Grantaire broke his uncharacteristic silence and started laughing. It snorted out of him like he’d been holding it in and just couldn’t anymore. He laughed until he overbalanced and fell of the arm of the loveseat, and kept right on laughing from the floor. Bossuet and Joly both leaned over him with (in Musichetta’s biased opinion) adorably identical expressions of concern. “...R?”

“You’re--” Grantaire gasped. “You’re a _bald Eagle_.”

Bossuet sighed into the silence following this revelation.

Then Joly started chuckling.

Within five seconds all three of them had progressed to laughing as hard as Grantaire, who was still convulsing on the floor in glee at his own terrible pun. The four of them were getting a lot of odd looks from the other occupants of the Hufflepuff common room, but Musichetta felt no compulsion to stop.

Grantaire did pick himself up eventually, when he stopped spasming, and plopped himself back on the arm of the loveseat. Musichetta was perched on the opposite arm, because Joly and Bossuet were taking up the actual cushions. (“Jolllly, I’m totally fine.” “I know. We’re cuddling now.”) Bossuet had shot her a look of apology when her boyfriend insisted on sprawling all over him, but she just poked him in the ribs with her foot and kept on rubbing his head. She couldn’t possibly be upset about this. This was _too_ sweet.

When she glanced up at Grantaire she saw that fondness reflected back in his own expression. She couldn’t remember seeing him look this unequivocally content.

His eyes flicked up to meet hers for a few seconds, and she wasn’t sure what he saw differently but his expression didn’t, for once, immediately turn surly. He just looked at her for a moment. Then he went back to rolling his eyes at his two best friends.

She looked back at them too, and the wave of contentment she felt at the picture they made almost made her giggle again.

Hmmm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is both long and late. I apologize for both, and hope it doesn't drag *too* much.
> 
> ~ I am having way too much fun with Musichetta. I offer my sincere apologies to the Italian language.  
> ~ I don't know how Treasure Planet got in there. Bahorel isn't even Muggleborn.  
> ~ Writing happy flirty romance continues to be weird to me. Number of people involved seems to have no effect. :)


	10. Chapter 10 (Musichetta)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Musichetta is only patient to a point, Grantaire is a gadfly, and both of them read too much Muggle history.

Valentine’s Day was...nice.

Joly dressed for the occasion, which had somewhat hilarious results since Bahorel and Prouvaire had invaded the Hufflepuff dormitories to assist Courfeyrac in dressing him. Musichetta told him his friends were ridiculous. He drew himself up and repeated “quirky and lovable” in a lofty tone.

Both of them were relieved to find that neither wanted to go to Madame Puddifoot’s. Cosette might be able to handle that (because of course Marius was taking her there), but for Musichetta there was such a thing as too much atmosphere. Joly, meanwhile, got nervous at the mention of the place, and began talking about how little he liked unexpected confetti in substances he was about to consume and how _unsanitary_ cherubs were as waiters and/or living decorations, they were hardly wearing anything, for Merlin’s sake. Musichetta’s amused reaction made him anxious, and, obviously steeling himself, he said they should go if she wanted to. “Hell no,” she said. “Let’s go look at books.”

The majority of their date was spent browsing at Tomes & Scrolls, smelling the old books together and giggling, reading out-of-context snippets from random volumes out loud. Musichetta felt some pity for the put-upon-looking shopkeeper, but not enough to stop making Joly laugh.

They did a little obligatory wandering through the romantically snowy streets, but kept it short; Joly was predictably fussy about spending too much time out in the cold, and where he placed his cane on the slippery roads. Musichetta eventually took the walking stick from him and had him lean on her arm. “If we go down, we go down together,” she announced. Fortunately, though, nobody went toppling into any drifts. (Except Marius, and Musichetta and Joly were quick to backtrack when they saw that because Cosette was on top of him.)

They finished up at the Three Broomsticks, where everything from the drinks to the atmosphere to Joly was comfortably warm, and it felt like the best end to the best day Musichetta had had in a while. Things could not have gone better than they did. Everything about Valentine’s Day had been _nice_.

It somehow hadn’t felt perfectly _complete_ , though, which was how Musichetta knew for sure that she needed to have a certain conversation.

\---

“I consider myself a patient person,” Musichetta began.

Joly and Bossuet both blinked at her. Neither of them seemed sure where she was going with this. “Well...you put up with all of us, so that’s definitely evidence in your favor?” Bossuet offered.

“Thank you,” Musichetta acknowledged. “But I’ve called this meeting”--in a tiny empty classroom with no windows, which might be part of what was unnerving the boys, but she’d really wanted privacy--”because it’s only been a couple weeks and I’ve already gotten impatient with my boyfriend not realizing he’s pining for his best friend, and his best friend refusing to admit he’s pining over my boyfriend.” She planted her hands on her hips. “So. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

Not much, if the stunned silence was anything to go by. She resisted to urge to reach out and return both of their dropped jaws to a closed position.

“ _Madonna_. Okay, I’ll go first. I say I would have rethought my approach to Joly if I’d known Bossuet wanted to date him.”

This jolted Joly into speech. “You wanted to _date_ me?”

“See, this is why I didn’t say anything,” Bossuet muttered.

“Really?” Musichetta prompted. “Because you were afraid he’d want to date you too?”

“What? Where are you getting--” Bossuet went to run a hand through his hair, only to let his arm drop with a sigh when he remembered he didn’t have any hair. “I didn’t say anything because he’s my best friend, and he’s been crushing since last year on a really awesome girl.” He spoke without looking at Joly, who looked stricken.

Musichetta sighed. “So you just chose the path of greatest unhappiness?”

Bossuet shrugged, gave that rueful grin. “I’m used to being the unlucky one.”

Joly now looked like the only thing he wanted in the world was to hug Bossuet, but he was afraid that would be a terrible idea.

Sometimes patience was overrated. “Bullshit,” Musichetta said. “You can’t make up your mind. You’ve spent the entire time we’ve been dating going back and forth between avoiding us, playing wingman, and flirting with me.” She waved off his protest and continued, “Well, what passes for flirting for you, which is apparently just blurting out that you like me.”

He winced. “That...really wasn’t supposed to come out…”

“You want to date her, too?” Joly now looked utterly lost.

“Okay, but there’s a really simple solution to this if you think about it.” Musichetta looked back and forth between the two of them expectantly.

They went back to giving her twin looks of confusion.

She thunked her head down on the desk in front of her. “ _Siete fortunati ad essere carini._ ”

“Um…” Bossuet said. “Sorry?”

“ _Fessi_ ,” she said affectionately.

Joly looked to Bossuet, who shrugged.

“The solution is that we date each other,” Musichetta clarified, sitting up again. “You guys can stop missing each other while you’re _in the same room_ , and I…” She gave them both a once-over. “I do pretty well for myself, don’t I?”

They gaped at her for a moment longer before turning to gape at each other. “Would you…?”

“I mean, I definitely would,” Joly hurried to say. “If you would.”

“You still like me with no hair?” Bossuet joked. Joly poked him with his cane. (Not very hard.)

“Hair loss has nothing on _four and a half years_ , you dummy!”

Bossuet took on the slightly dazed look of the victim of an overdone Cheering Charm. “Oh.”

“I mean, I’ve only had a few months,” Musichetta put in. She wasn’t going to let them have all the sappy moments to themselves. “But I still don’t know how you could’ve thought we didn’t like you.”

This time both the boys turned dazed grins on her. She didn’t think they’d even realized they were now holding hands. “Oh.”

\---

All three of them had agreed not to break the news to their friends until the next meeting, so that they’d have a couple days to get used to it themselves. (They were very enjoyable days.) They hadn’t intended to make a dramatic entrance or anything, but Musichetta also hadn’t expected to walk into an already-dramatic scene. The scene did involved Grantaire, though. Grantaire in the same room as Enjolras. Grantaire in a room with Enjolras, who’d gotten there early with no one else to talk to. Musichetta and her boys were among the last to arrive and the conversation still hadn’t slowed down. She hadn’t known Enjolras and Grantaire to actually have conversations, per se, but, taking in the scene, felt she shouldn’t be surprised by the result. Bahorel looked like he wished he’d brought popcorn.

"You." R's eyebrows seemed in danger of crawling right off his forehead. " _You_ favor the death penalty?"

"I _do not_ favor the death penalty," Enjolras snarled.

"You _just said_ that if it were necessary, it’d be right and fair to kill the person in power--"

"That is not even remotely the same as the death penalty--"

"It's finding someone guilty and executing them for their crimes, isn't it?"

"It's removing an active source of harm from a position of power before it can do more harm." Enjolras was cold as ice. "If it were another case of...of Hitler,” about whom Musichetta wasn’t sure how much he actually knew, “would you let so many people die--"

"One, it would be more complicated than that," Grantaire ticked off on his fingers, "people voted for him, you know. Two, time paradoxes--"

"You know perfectly well I'm not talking about encountering a historical Muggle dictator--"

"Three, you realize what you're doing, right?" Grantaire threw his hands in the air. "You're _using the rhetoric of tyranny_ against tyranny! Kill this person because I say they endanger the state! It's not going to solve anything. Even if one single person were the whole problem, something would fill the vacuum. Dictator or oligarchy or _demos tyrannos_. You'd murder someone and the status quo wouldn't change."

"The point," Enjolras' face was smooth as ever, but his voice quivered a little with suppressed...something, "would be to _make_ the status quo change. If that's not the goal there is no hope for success." It might have been anger, or it might have been excess passion, or it might have been something else. "Do you really think I'd condone killing of any sort when it wasn't absolutely necessary?"

There were a lot of retorts Grantaire could have made. (Musichetta could almost hear his voice in her head saying that Enjolras would of course be the judge of absolute necessity, because that kind of thing was beyond the judgment of mere mortals). But he didn't speak for a moment. If looks could kill, Combeferre--one hand suddenly resting on Enjolras' arm--would have been guilty of murder right about now. Grantaire didn't even seem to notice him, though; he was still looking at Enjolras. And then he looked away, with a soft half-laugh.

"No," he said. "Of course. You'd be a reluctant, noble tyrannicide." His lips quirked, and his gaze went back to Enjolras, completely different from a moment ago. He made a show of eyeing him up and down. "Harmodius, for sure."

Enjolras just stared at him flatly. But he did shift so that Combeferre could drop his hand from his arm. "Because that means something."

"It means you're younger and prettier than your gay lover and fellow Tyrannicide," Grantaire said cheerfully. "Which is going to be true for you no matter who your Aristogeiton is."

"Can we write an official rulebook," Courfeyrac proposed, "and make the first rule that R has to stop speaking Greek?"

"It's a positive reference," Musichetta reassured him, as grateful as he for the defused tension. "They were romanticized in Athenian legend as forefathers of the democracy." Her boyfriends, in one of whose lap she was sitting and the other of whom was sitting in her lap, both turned to look at her. It took some contortion. "What? Some of us had to study Muggle history.”

“And yet,” Feuilly put in, “we have no memory of Harmonious and the Aristocat.”

Musichetta shrugged. “I like the Classics."

"I would propose to you right now based purely on that, if both my best friends wouldn't kill me for it," Grantaire said, making an elaborate bow. "Though the Tyrannicides are also an utterly inappropriate reference, since they never actually killed any tyrants."

"None of this conversation having been at all relevant to the meeting," Enjolras cut in with finality, gaze no longer focused on Grantaire--and oh, Musichetta had just been getting into it, she couldn’t remember the last person willing to banter about Muggle Classics with her--"let's begin."

"Wait wait wait." Bahorel raised his hand, but didn't wait to be called on. "While we're getting things that aren't relevant out of the way..."

Enjolras let out a long breath through his nose. Combeferre gave him a sympathetic pat on the back, though he looked amused.

Bahorel swung around to face Musichetta and her boys. "When did _that_ happen?!"

She could see the moment it registered on everyone’s faces. Courfeyrac was quickest to react; he threw himself across Enjolras' desk at them. "Merlin's pants! Forget when, how did this happen without either of you _telling me_?" He looked from Joly to Bossuet. "Or at least giving it away somehow!"

Musichetta felt a twinge of guilt for derailing the meeting before it had started, but not a very strong one. " _Cosa_?" she said mildly, grinning at Combeferre; her Housemate, ever gracious, was at least trying to hide his surprise. "Whatever are you all talking about? Oh." She twirled a strand of Joly's hair around her fingers. He was already giggling helplessly. "This?"

She kissed Bossuet. It was just a light peck, but she heard Marius emit a shocked squeak, and Cosette's softly reproachful "Marius!"

"Yes," Combeferre replied dryly. "I think we're talking about that."

Prouvaire stood up to hug all three of them. Feuilly said, "Congratulations, and tell us all the sordid details, but preferably later?" Courfeyrac and Bahorel appeared to be trying to outdo one another in being shocked, _shocked_ , that neither Joly nor Bossuet had told them anything. Éponine made no comment on them at all, but suggested that Courfeyrac and Bahorel start a drama club.

Grantaire just snorted. "You guys're surprised?"

Musichetta winked at him over Prouvaire's shoulder, and he grinned back. It stretched wider than she was accustomed to seeing on him at any time, much less directed at her, and lit his face in a way she hadn’t seen before. Happiness looked good on him, she thought. Then she felt Bossuet shift to flip R the bird, and that was all it took for the now-four-person pile to collapse.

The meeting never did get back on track, but Musichetta couldn't bring herself to regret it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In return for that last long chapter, I bring you a really short chapter! And a probably too-long endnote...
> 
> ~ Musichetta's reaction to Overly Romantic Atmosphere is approximately my own. Including "let's go look at books."  
> ~ Musichetta tells her boys they're lucky they're cute, and calls them dumb. Out of love, of course. (I am totally that foreigner attempting to use local slang, I'm sorry, but Musichetta's not, so I continue to try.)  
> ~ Enjolras, mine and canon, takes his personal moral responsibility so *seriously*. I didn't mean for this scene to be intense but I think he's incapable of not-intense.  
> ~ "demos tyrannos": “All humankind fears you [the Athenian people] like a tyrannical man” (Aristophanes, Knights). Woo ancient imperialism!  
> ~ (Ok, so that comes from a comedic playwright, but Greek Old Comedy involved a lot of very specific social commentary and parody, down to singling out individuals in the audience, in addition to the humor and vulgarity. ...I bet R loves Old Comedy.)  
> ~ I realized later I could have made a perfect and much more recognizable reference to Brutus, but I was studying the Greeks when I wrote this, so they were on my mind. I personally suspect R prefers them to the Romans--obsessive Stoicism is not his scene. Plus, I would have had to cut the joke about the [Tyrannicides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmodius_and_Aristogeiton) not actually killing any tyrants. (They killed a tyrant's brother. ...Nice try?) Thucydides says they did it out of personal revenge, anyway, and all it did was make the tyrant angry, but thanks to the Athenian democracy Harmodius and Aristogeiton went down in history/art as symbols of the power of the people and homoerotic relationships in their proper place/function in society. (R’s description as “gay lovers” is kinda reductive given that “gay” didn’t exist as a concept back then, but if I start talking about that I will never stop.) Victor Hugo uses both these guys as referents for Enjolras when he introduces him in the Brick. Make of that what you will.  
> ~ I will shut up about Greece now.


	11. Chapter 11 (Grantaire)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The year comes to a close. Grantaire tries not to think about it.

February started out as a shitty month, because Grantaire’s best friends were being _morons_ , but ended as a fantastic month, because they finally,  _finally_ got together. It had only taken four and a half years. There was the admittedly unexpected addition of a girl, but she recognized his Homer quotes, and responded with ones from Dante, and liked to bring Dostoevsky into arguments, so once she was no longer making either of them miserable Grantaire was quite content with her presence. It didn’t hurt that she was never in the least bothered by Joly’s hypochondria and Bossuet’s terrible luck. Grantaire swore she kept a stash of tissues and tongue depressors magically stored up her sleeve for one boyfriend, while her use of Mending and Scouring Charms on the other one was approaching instinctive, and never came with more commentary than a roll of her eyes. She handled the two-headed entity that was Joly and Bossuet like a pro. Grantaire had to admit he was impressed.

He was getting a lot more opportunity to observe how good they were together now, too, because the three of them wouldn’t leave him alone. Breakfasts were still couple time, but they rotated, so that either Joly or Bossuet was with Grantaire. The majority of their “dates” happened in the Hufflepuff common room, which made them (and Courf’s wolf-whistling) hard to avoid. And whenever their whole friend group was together, Musichetta followed the boys’ lead in shoehorning themselves in next to Grantaire. The trio had invaded the corner where he and Thenardier (and, previously, the unattached Bossuet) sat at meetings, which was probably fortunate; Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta’s conversation was much more enjoyable than a Gloomy Singles Corner. It was also surprisingly effective at distracting Thenardier from Pontmercy’s mooning over his girlfriend. Grantaire was eternally grateful for not being stuck with _that_ job.

(He didn’t know how he’d have gone about it, anyway, since she didn’t pay much attention to his ramblings. Offered to smuggle her in some Firewhiskey? She’d have to share it with him.)

Thenardier might still not be able to have Marius, but at least she was coming to meetings again--it was nice to not be the only realist in the room--and Cosette was cool. Grantaire might still not be worth any more than Enjolras’ mild irritation, but he was used to that, and his two incandescently happy best friends (and their girl) didn’t seem to care. So, on the whole, February ended miles better than it began. Even if being so near his friends’ happiness felt a tad surreal.

\---

March started out frozen, but the latter weeks brought endless rain, which was a drag when it came to the spring holidays. Everyone was stuck inside the whole week, with no excuse not to study. Fewer people went home for the holidays in the middle of the semester, so most of Grantaire’s friends spent the break together, huddled in the library, commiserating. (Or, if you were a nerd like Combeferre or an overachiever like Enjolras or too good to be true like Feuilly, actually studying.)

The library wasn’t Grantaire’s favorite place to not get work done, because it forced you to do it _quietly_. That, if you asked him--though no one would; he’d trained them all to realize asking him anything was a bad idea, unless you had a high bullshit tolerance and an hour to spare--defeated the point. His friends, though, cared about at least _pretending_ not to waste time. And if his friends were in the library, Grantaire wasn’t going to be anywhere else.

As it turned out, sometimes there was entertainment to be had even there.

Courfeyrac was the only one to witness the event, since no one else had thought it prudent to go after Thenardier. Cosette had kissed Marius on the cheek for passing her the right book and the other girl had abruptly disappeared into the stacks; and okay, she’d been gone a while now, but it’s not like she was staying away by accident, and she was _not_ the type to appreciate pity. But Courfeyrac, as Grantaire knew well, didn’t like leaving people alone. When the rest of them had heard Thenardier’s voice, followed by a muffled explosion, followed by shrieking, Grantaire had almost thought she’d taught Courfeyrac the hard way not to bother her when she didn’t want to be bothered.

But then both Courfeyrac and Thenardier had gone pelting past the group on their way out of the library, so Grantaire didn’t have any idea what was going on. Neither did anyone else. Naturally they all shoved books into bags and ran after the two fugitives.

They hadn’t gone far. They were in fact still close enough to the library that the shrieking (was there more than one voice involved now?) was still audible. This was not wise if they intended to not get caught, but Courfeyrac had collapsed against the wall and was laughing too hard to run any farther. Feuilly cleared his throat. “I think I speak for us all when I say, 'huh?'”

“I didn’t do anything!” Courfeyrac gasped. “I swear! I just heard her talking and came around the corner and _bam_!”

“Bam what?” Bahorel looked disgruntled at having missed the action. “Talking to who?”

Thenardier stowed her wand. “Montparnasse.” She considered, then clarified. “Slytherin, seventh year, yea high, pretentious hair. Thinks he’s a catch. Bad at taking hints.”

“Are you all right, Ponine?” Pontmercy’s’ voice was so obliviously sincere. Grantaire saw Cosette wince.

Enjolras’ eyes narrowed in righteous anger. It was one of his best looks, in Grantaire’s humble opinion. Not that much looked bad on him, however determinedly he suppressed his veela wiles (or glared at Grantaire for calling them “veela wiles”). “What did he do?”

“Down, boy,” Thenardier told him. Grantaire nearly laughed out loud. “I took care of it.”

“Did you...curse him?” Combeferre asked carefully.

Courfeyrac, somewhat recovered from his laughing jag, shook his head. “Most incredible Bat-Bogey Hex I have _ever_ seen, and I’ve seen Prouvaire angry. Bow down, my friends, we are not worthy.” Because Courfeyrac was Courfeyrac, he actually prostrated himself at Thenardier’s feet, which thankfully made her look more like she wanted to check him into the hospital wing than like she wanted to hex him too. “Please never get mad at me. Never ever cross this woman, folks. Oh, you should have seen his _face._ ”

“We _should_ ,” Thenardier said, “get up off the floor and _move_ before Javert gets here.”

Courfeyrac just started to laugh again. “I _want_ to see Javert dealing with that many bats.”

“As long as they don’t nest in the shelves.” Joly shuddered. “That would be incredibly unsanitary.”

The group started moving in the direction of the Hufflepuff common room, since it was closest, Enjolras of course taking the lead. Grantaire fell into his accustomed place in the back. He hadn’t counted on Cosette, though, who held Thenardier back behind everyone else and didn’t seem to realize he could hear her. Not that she should have; Grantaire always did consider himself more of a background fixture than a participant. It was one of the things about him that annoyed Enjolras the most. “I’m sorry about earlier,” Cosette murmured. “In the library.”

“Not your fault.” Terser than ever.

“Still,” Cosette said. “I wish it wasn’t...preventing us from--” Thenardier snorted. Cosette sighed. “Éponine.”

Silence followed. When Grantaire chanced a look around there was no one behind him anymore. The door of the nearest classroom was clicking shut.

\---

Grantaire didn’t know what was said in that room, but he was slightly less surprised than everyone else at dinner on the first day back to classes, when they saw Cosette greet Thenardier with “Hi, Éponine,” and Thenardier respond with “Hey, lark,” and the exchange of tentative smiles.

\---

April, for the fifth years, brought careers advising.

“Do they just want to give us more stress as we’re going into OWLs?” Courfeyrac complained, listlessly flicking through a pile of pamphlets stolen from the Hufflepuff common room. Grantaire didn’t look at them. They turned his stomach.

“I think there’s an element of...prioritizing OWLs,” Combeferre said, patting Courfeyrac’s head where he’d rested it on his desk. “Since our OWL scores determine which NEWTs we have to choose from, and which NEWTs we take shape our career options...”

“That’s a great motivator,” Feuilly muttered, buried in homework as usual. “Calculating what we can afford to fail. No pressure on the ones we _can’t_ , of _course_.”

“It’s not so bad,” Bossuet reassured them all, rubbing his girlfriend and boyfriend’s backs. “I mean, my OWL practicals went...about as well as could be expected, and I still got to take the NEWT courses I wanted.”

“How did you pick which ones you wanted?” Musichetta’s voice was muffled. She had adopted a pose similar to Courfeyrac’s.

Bossuet rubbed his head. It was a habit he’d developed since Splinching his hair, and no, Grantaire was never going to let him forget that, even if it all grew back in, which was looking unlikely. “Well,” he said, “I just threw out the classes I hated and drew by lot from the rest. It was a pretty random process.”

“Not for me, it wasn’t,” Bahorel interjected. “I already knew what I wanted to do. Not a lot of classes are much use for dragon training.”

“And?”

“And my Head of House spent the whole advising session trying to tell me, ‘you are aware that dragons are impossible to domesticate,’ blah blah blah.” He scoffed.

“What did you say?”

He gave a toothy grin. “‘Not if they think you’re a dragon.’”

\---

Grantaire had no desire to be a dragon, or be anywhere near dragons, though he toyed with the idea of insisting on it just to see Muguet’s reaction. In the end he decided it wasn’t worth the effort, and went with general apathy--that, he knew he could pull off.

“Mademoiselle Floréal,” he said upon entering her office, which was cheerfully lit and filled with potted greenery and not very office-like at all--very her. “Surrounded by flowers in bloom, as befits your name and nature. How are you today, _ma belle_?”

“Firstly, married, and secondly, not _your_ anything.” She flashed him her goblin-made wedding ring and a serene smile in return for his tragic sigh. There was comfort in routine. “Except your professor, and Head of House, and careers advisor.” She gestured at the comfortable chair across from hers. “Take a seat.”

Down to business, then. Grantaire’s stomach sank as he sat.

“Have you thought at all about what you’d be interested in doing after Hogwarts?” Muguet asked, brushing her blonde hair out of her face as she leaned forward on her elbows. Grantaire was not used to that gesture being used on him. It was her Talk To Me, I’m Approachable gesture.

He waved a careless hand. “Yeah, I’ve decided I want to be professionally aimless. Do I have to do much to prepare for that?”

“My general advice is to continue with what you’re good at and what interests you,” she replied without missing a beat. Sometimes Grantaire wished she wasn’t so supremely unruffled. She smiled like she was telling a secret. “I know this doesn’t get said much, but you don’t _have_ to know what you want to do with your life by the time you’re sixteen.”

He gave a short laugh. “Well, I already know I’m not going to be doing much of anything with my life.” An easy grin, to take the edge off it.

“How do you know that?”

“I know me.” He shrugged. “I don’t... _do_ anything, I fall into things and then I fall out.”

“Can you think of anything you’d like not to fall out of? That’d be a good starting point, for NEWTs certainly, perhaps for careers.”

He laughed his not-a-laugh again, gaze dropping from not-quite-eye-contact. “Sure.”

“Such as?”

“Nothing academic.”

“Quite a lot of careers are not academic.”

His robes bunched in his tightening hands. “There’s nothing to be done about it, okay? Things are gonna move on, go onwards and upwards, and I’m not. So.”

She studied him, excruciatingly perceptive. Grantaire was used to being disappointing and a pain in the ass, but he was also used to her being used to it--resigned to being his Floréal rather than his professor. Resigned to his little games. Her taking him seriously was always unpleasant. “I would advise,” she said, gentle but firm, “not choosing all of your NEWTs based solely on your friends.”

He kept his head down.

\---

May, again for the fifth years, brought OWLs madness.

Grantaire had thought the spring holidays were mind-numbing and the opposite of fun, but it quickly became apparent that they had just been a warmup. More than half his friends were spending every spare minute on exam prep. Group meetings had been transformed into study sessions. Everyone had finals to study for, of course, but only the fifth years had _OWLs_. Bahorel and Bossuet clowned around while they studied, laughing at everyone. Cosette and Prouvaire hovered, looking both concerned for their friends’ states of sleep deprivation and dreadfully anxious about their own fates next year.

Not everyone approved of the temporary halt of activism for something so trivial as standardized exams. And by “not everyone” Grantaire of course meant Enjolras. Oh, he was killing himself with test prep just like the rest of them, but he was visibly agitated about it encroaching on his Causes. Grantaire was _fascinated_. Enjolras could be a lot of things, including frustrated, enraged, serene, annoyed, dismissive, and too passionate, but this was new. This was Enjolras frazzled _._

It was kind of adorable.

“We shouldn’t be wasting this time,” he muttered from the front of the meeting room, even as he boxed himself in with desks spread with his notes.

“We’re not,” Feuilly assured him, without looking up from his own piles of parchment.

Bahorel sniggered from where he was sprawled on the floor. “So precious.”

Prouvaire kicked him on his way past, ignoring his Quidditch partner’s indignant “Ow!” as he delivered a drink of water to Combeferre. The Ravenclaw gave him a sincere, if distracted, smile and sipped before continuing to read from the page in front of him. “And Europa?”

“The moons of Europa are covered in ice,” Courfeyrac said in a monotone from where he was flopped over the back of his desk chair.

“Europa _is_ the moon that’s covered in ice,” Combeferre corrected patiently. “And it’s a moon of…?”

Courfeyrac let out a noise like a dying cow. “ _W_ _ho bloody cares_?”

“This is ridiculous.” Pontmercy was slumped in his seat between Courfeyrac and Thenardier--a major warning sign for him. Grantaire hadn’t thought the kid even knew how to bend his spine. “Is this just an English thing? I’m pretty sure fifth year isn’t like this in France. We test in sixth year. Oh, Merlin, what if that’s _worse_?” Grantaire would have laughed if it hadn’t felt like too much effort. Careers advising and the sudden omnipresence of OWLs stress had been messing with his appetite, and he was a bit woozy from not eating at dinner. Pontmercy dropped his head into his hands. “Where’s Cosette?”

“Kitchens,” Thenardier reminded him. She reached out as if to rub the nearest of Pontmercy’s tense shoulders, but wavered and then dropped her hand before it got to him.

“Fear not, Marius, your lady love shall return,” Bossuet called across the room. He couldn’t make a comforting gesture, or move much at all, because his girlfriend was draped over him on one side and his boyfriend pressed into him on the other, both commandeering his wandless page-turning and note-sorting skills; he offered an encouraging smile instead. “And she’ll be bearing snacks!” Courfeyrac made another inhuman sound, this time closer to a constipated hippogriff. “Hang in there, Courf, only a few minutes to study break.”

“Good.” Enjolras started shuffling his notes at a frantic pace. “We need to get some work done--”

“We _are_ working,” Combeferre said over everybody’s groans.

“We’re working on schoolwork!” Enjolras ran a hand through his hair, which Grantaire couldn’t remember ever seeing this mussed.

Combeferre just nodded, turning to the next page of his Astronomy outline. “That is rather the point.”

“But this is our meeting time,” Enjolras argued, “if we’re going to take a break from studying we should devote the time to club business, since that’s what we’re supposed to be here for--”

“Not today, Enjolras.”

“We didn’t break schedule for finals last year!”

“The majority of us didn’t have OWLs last year.”

“But--”

“No, Enjolras.”

Combeferre didn’t even have to turn and look to know his victory was assured. He just leaned into Prouvaire and started quizzing Courfeyrac on Ganymede. Enjolras subsided back into his nest of notes and textbooks with only a few more grumbles and pouts. _Pouts._ Since when did Enjolras pout?

Grantaire wished he had the energy to laugh, or crack some joke that’d make Enjolras glare, or do much of anything besides stare at his sparse semi-legible notes without reading them, because this was priceless.   

\---

June brought the actual OWL exams, which after all that fuss passed in a bit of a blur. To be honest, Grantaire preferred it that way. He was perfectly fine with not remembering enough of the word vomit he’d produced for each exam to fret over what he might have said wrong. He closed his eyes and napped whenever Combeferre, Feuilly, and Joly started picking back over the questions.

After the very last test, though, which happened to be the Defense written, even they were shushed--as Courfeyrac said, “it is a beautiful summer day and we are free, FREE, of OWLs. Just let them go, ’Ferre. _Let them go._ ” They all took advantage of the weather and the freedom to wander down to the lake and sprawl in the grass.

Grantaire shut his eyes against the sun. The smell of spring fading to summer and the warmth of late afternoon and the murmur of fellow students were everywhere, but he and his friends were silent and still. Relaxed, even, for what felt like the first time in months. The peace was a shock to his system.

It couldn’t have been very long before the fourth and sixth years joined them, though time felt languid and stretched with the sun behind his eyelids and the blissful emptiness of his mind. They dispelled the lazy atmosphere, but also brought with them the smell of house-elf-made pastries, so Grantaire forgave them.

Enjolras frowned ever so slightly as his friends helped themselves (and, in Courf’s case, kissed Cosette’s picnic-basket-bearing hand). “We can’t ask the house-elves for extra favors when they’re already serving all our needs without pay--”

“They have these to spare in the kitchens, _ange_ ,” Grantaire drawled, smiling at the way Enjolras sighed through his nose at the nickname. “Probably couldn’t wait to give them away.”

“And I gave them some pillowcases I’ve been working on,” Cosette soothed, “and the tea cosies I knitted, in exchange.”

“That’s a good start, E,” Courfeyrac assured him, “no scaring them off." He plucked a chocolate éclair from the basket for himself and shoved a second one in Enjolras’ face. “Baby steps.”

Bossuet flopped down next to Joly, who rolled away from Grantaire to use his boyfriend as a pillow. Prouvaire settled himself crosslegged between Bahorel and Combeferre. “It’s so good to be able to sit outdoors again. I always forget what summer sunlight feels like. All caught in amber.” He tipped his face up to the sun. “‘Weary of time…’”

He kept murmuring about flowers and travelers and graves and pining while everyone finished digging through the goodie basket and Courf started talking with his mouth full. “So,” he said, spewing crumbs, “now that we’re free, who has cool plans for the summer?” He elbowed Pontmercy. “Marius is staying at mine, so I bet none of you’ll be able to live up to _our_ shenanigans.”

Pontmercy looked understandably alarmed at the thought of shenanigans with Courfeyrac. “I don’t want to make any _trouble_ , I just--Mr. Mabeuf wouldn’t be able to afford putting me up for another summer--”

“Dude.” Courfeyrac slung an arm around his friend’s shoulders. “My parents raised _me_. You will be _no_ trouble.” He waved a magnanimous hand. “Hell, invite your old Mabeuf. We’ve got room.”

The other boy smiled at that. “I might, but he won’t leave his garden.”

“Why’re you going home with Courf, though?” Bahorel asked. He wiggled his eyebrows. “You won’t take him in, Fauchelevent?”

“Because that’d be a great way to introduce the beau,” Thenardier snorted. “‘Hey dad, this is my boyfriend! I just met him a few months ago, he can’t support or house himself, can he sleep in the room next to mine?’”

Cosette burst out laughing. “Maybe--maybe not the ideal way.” Thenardier looked tentatively pleased with herself, and Marius looked mildly terrified.

“What about you, Ponine?” he asked, in a voice which was, to his credit, only a bit squeaky. “Are you going anywhere for the holidays?”

Grantaire saw the flickering smile on Thenardier’s face go out. “Home.”

Cosette shifted a protective half-inch forward, which the other girl didn’t seem to know whether to appreciate or be insulted by, but no one asked for further details.

Prouvaire, poetic musings abandoned, spoke up before any awkward silence could settle. “I’m going to the continent,” he announced, glowing with excitement.

“‘The _continent_ ,’” Bahorel repeated, faking a swoon. Prouvaire punched him in the bicep.

“My family’s going to visit our ancestral home in Provence, and then we’ll be travelling around the Mediterranean,” he went on as though uninterrupted. “I’m going to see _Rome_!”

“Oh, when will you be there?” Musichetta sat up. “My family may be visiting the cousins in Siena sometime, if the budget works out.”

No one else was planning anything special, or anything different from last year, at any rate. Bossuet was crashing on Joly’s couch again, and his family might join him for part of the summer; the only change was their relationship status (to which Joly’s parents' only response had been “Finally.”). Feuilly was working another Muggle summer job to help out his mum. Bahorel and Combeferre were both just going home.

Enjolras was going home, too, but he went carefully stone-faced when he said it. He always did, Grantaire had noticed; Enjolras was never happy to go home. Of course, being Enjolras, and technically having it much better than most people, he was never going to say anything to indicate dissatisfaction or unhappiness. But he didn’t have to. It was still clear.

Clear to Grantaire, at least. He couldn’t say whether anyone else was looking.

Sometimes, Grantaire knew, it was more about the people than about how comfortably they could afford to keep you, and it didn’t help if “people” meant “single father who really hadn’t wanted to be stuck raising the kid.” At least Enjolras had what must be a small army of house-elves, and his mother was close enough to visit in the family cemetery, and he had no reason to wonder whether his dad was keeping her from him or if she just didn’t have anything to say to him…

Grantaire wasn’t looking forward to going home either. Thinking about it tended to turn his mood ugly like that.

Bossuet pulled a Cosette and scooched nearer. Grantaire shoved at Bossuet’s shoulder with his own, and stomped down on thoughts about the future. He had no need of them when he still had days left here with his friends.

\---

Hogwarts Express compartments were not built to fit thirteen. They were also, it seemed, magically proofed against Undetectable Extension Charms; when Courfeyrac tried one, there was nothing but a flash of light and a yelp as a red, ruler-shaped mark appeared across the back of his wand hand.

He glared at the mark as it faded, then around the compartment as if a gauntlet had been thrown. "We reject your spatial parameters and substitute our own!"

They managed it somehow, mostly by sitting in each other's laps and shrinking their trunks until Grantaire could sprawl in the luggage rack with them. It wasn’t the most comfortable he’d ever been, but it was an excellent vantage point--he could drip butterbeer directly onto Bossuet’s still-bald head (which he stopped when Musichetta licked a drop off, because ick), and flick crumbs from his pumpkin pasties into everyone’s hair (except Enjolras’; messing with that hair had to be some kind of punishable crime), and yell out clues about people’s hands in Exploding Snap. Though that last one eventually got him a combusting card to the face.

He ignored the scenery rushing by outside the window. Seeing the rolling countryside melt into urban sprawl and finally underground tunnel always gave him a sinking feeling, and he wanted to hang on to the warmth and buoyancy in this train compartment as long as he could before having to go without it for almost three months.

Combeferre thwarted his efforts, though. As soon as he noted the change in landscape, he nudged Courfeyrac off his lap so he could rummage in his satchel, and Courf leapt to his feet with a flourish. “Ladies and gents,” he announced, “as it is nearly time for us to say our temporary farewells--”

“Killjoy,” Bahorel booed. Prouvaire elbowed him in the stomach.

“--Combeferre and I would like to take this moment to introduce our latest project, which we embarked upon with the intention of keeping us all in contact over the summer!”

Grantaire could only see the top of Pontmercy’s head, but he could visualize the confused wrinkle in his brow when he spoke. “What’s wrong with owl post?”

Courfeyrac sighed. “Nothing, if you have ten owls. Or want to send one owl out to bring the same letter to everyone, when at least two of us are gonna be out of the country, but that would just end in beak-inflicted wounds and tears.” He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Plus carpal tunnel, if your Trace won’t let you Geminio all your letters.”

“Muggles have still got you beat in some things,” Musichetta said smugly.

Feuilly leaned across the compartment to fist-bump her. “You’ll never have home computers, suckers.”

“Computers?” The word sounded funny in Enjolras’ mouth, and Musichetta snorted.

“Anyway!” Courfeyrac waved his hands until he had everyone’s attention again (though Enjolras didn’t look satisfied on the subject of computers). “Because ’Ferre is, as we all know, a genius--”

“Or just does his theory homework,” Combeferre interjected, emerging from the depths of his satchel with an armful of parchment scrolls.

“Why do people keep interrupting my speechmaking?” Courf demanded. “This never happens to Enjolras.”

“You just haven’t got the mesmerizing angelface, Courf,” Grantaire called. It earned him a glacial glance from the angelfaced boy in question.

“But I’ve got an owl-free communication system!” Courfeyrac snatched up some of the scrolls in Combeferre’s arms. “’Ferre, as I was saying, worked some NEWT-level magic and now we have us twelve Protean-Charmed scrolls!” He tossed the two he was holding to Marius and Bossuet, both of whom looked bemused, and went back for more. “Anything anybody writes on one, shows up on all the others. See? Genius.”

“They’re only three feet each, though,” Combeferre put in, tossing one scroll up to Grantaire in the luggage rack. Grantaire managed to catch it without tumbling off his perch. “So write small.”

Prouvaire had unrolled his piece of parchment, which, like all the others, looked perfectly ordinary, and bit his lip. “What if I want to send postcards?”

Combeferre smiled. “That’s what these are for.” He handed Prouvaire a small picture frame--the cheap, idiotproof kind, clear on both sides and with no actual frame, so that you just slid the picture in from the side. Courfeyrac started handing the rest of them around, and everyone jumped when an Exploding Snap card appeared in every single one. Combeferre just smiled again and slipped the card out of his frame. It disappeared from all the others.

“Perfect.” Prouvaire scooched out of Bahorel’s lap and into Combeferre’s to hug him.

Bahorel seized his own picture frame. “Aw, man, I wanna try!”

The remainder of the journey was spent shoving whatever flat pieces of paper people could find into the picture frames--a napkin, a few indignant-looking Chocolate Frog cards, someone’s shredded Transfiguration essay. But Grantaire, if he was honest, wasn’t really watching that. He was too busy watching his friends enjoy themselves like a litter of puppies with new toys. It’d take some admittedly odd puppies to examine the magical workings of their toys, like Feuilly was doing, or balance them on their heads, like Bahorel was doing; but Joly was actually imitating a puppy and bouncing in his seat, to no one's surprise. Grantaire watched Cosette shake with delighted laughter, her boyfriend tilting his head up to her just enough that Grantaire could make out the corner of his sappy grin. He watched Éponine clutch her scroll and picture frame like someone was going to try and take them from her. He watched Enjolras, still amid the chaos as usual, watch everyone else. That surprising smile of his could have lit the whole compartment on its own.

It felt harder every summer, leaving this.

Grantaire could only tighten his grip on Combeferre’s gifts and wrap himself in his friends’ presence while he still had it. He tried to ignore the train going underground--nearly there.

It didn’t have to be so hard, he told himself. Thanks to Courf’s crazy and ’Ferre’s genius, he’d be able to talk to any of them like they were in the same room. Or, well, at least like they were passing notes in class. He cracked a smile at the thought. Maybe this summer didn’t have to feel like leaving school at all.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this one ended up being long and disjointed and all over the place. But it is also the last in this school year! Wow, I actually made it to the end of the year. (I realize it doesn't feel like much of an ending, but that's because I a) suck at endings and b) am not done with these guys. :) ) 
> 
> ~ Cosette and Éponine's conversation involves Éponine insisting they don't need to talk and Cosette insisting they need to not only talk but also possibly hug, or at least shake hands or something. Also, many emotions. *cuddles them*  
> ~ The careers-advising-related nervousness is very personal right now. Adulthood. *shudders*  
> ~ Jacqueline May "Floréal" Muguet is one of the character adaptations I'm most tickled about, having put waaaaay too much thought into her name and relationship with R. So of course she only has one scene.  
> ~ Jehan recites ["Ah! Sun-flower" by William Blake](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172905) to himself. It has a meter and rhyme scheme that feel very pretty and whimsical while it contemplates doomed love and death, so I thought Jehan might like it. Plus I'm singing a gorgeous contemporary setting of it with my school's glee club, so it's stuck in my head. :P  
> ~ Also, how did my Jehan wind up so casually violent?  
> ~ The kids' Summer Communications Highlights Reel is the next thing on my agenda, so I had to try to figure out wizarding instant messaging. Protean Charm was the best I could come up with. Bless Combeferre.
> 
> Thank you for reading all the way through this weirdly-paced monster! I will be eternally grateful if you stick around for part 2...when I find time to finish it. :)


End file.
